United States

We're (not?) at War

The United States killed foreign civilians for show and is excitedly returning to the Dept of War, but we aren’t at war, maybe?

Endeavorance

08 Sep 2025 — 9 min read

Stateside

The US is either at war or doing war crimes or both, I dunno. Hard to tell at this point.

In just the past few weeks, the Trump administration executed 11 foreign citizens in international waters, changed the Department of Defense to the Department of War (if only aesthetically, still weird), and is now deploying F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico as an intimidation tactic in the name of "fighting the war against drug cartels," which is not a war but apparently is a war enough that we're sending the military into a foreign nation and entertaining regime change.

Venezuela reportedly flew fighter jets of their own over the tops of the destroyers which the US has deployed to waters near Venezuela, which prompted the move of the F-35 jets.

Top boys from across the Trump admin have held strong that they were totally allowed to carry out this strike. "Absolute authority" is the phrasing they've been using. Hegseth, Trump, Vance et al are stating that this was a drug boat, which somehow gives the US military the authority to bomb it. They go on to claim it is associated with Tren de Aragua, a gang which they've said Venezuela is a state sponsor of, which is a sort of roundabout way to say, "we can go to war with them" despite that not being how anything works.

To be just so absolutely clear: military force against civilian targets—even supposed criminals—is a war crime. The Trump admin has produced nary a shred of evidence for their claim, yet turn around and state that anyone skeptical of this attack must be supportive of drug cartels. It's disingenuous and absurd, and these dudes seem to revel in the idea of being able to do things that others call "war crimes" without caring.

But like, actually. Vance replied to a tweet calling it a "war crime" by saying:

A tweet from JD Vance which reads, "I don't give a shit what you call it"

Now before you start formulating the deeply understandable questions such as, "what happened to the 'no new wars' presidency," recall that it has never once been about actual reason or ideological consistency. It's about power, who has that power, and if people believe that they are on that powers' good side.

Simultaneously, Trump has been escalating his rhetoric against Chicago, recently posting an image depicting the military invading a burning Chicago as he looks on. That's just a thing that has happened, and we've just gotta keep moving on apparently.

Our top military cabinet official wants to be known as the "Secretary of War" while the Vice President publicly says he doesn't give a shit if you think our country is violating international law. This is seen as "strong" by weak people, unfortunately.

All the while, freedoms continue to erode, cities and educational institutions continue to face attacks from the federal government, and hell—they're already looking at how they could take away guns from transgender citizens. Thankfully, that move has rightly sparked outrage even from the likes of the NRA.

So where do we stand? Are we at war? I mean, cosmically, yes. We always have been. That's what funds our country. It's where our tax dollars are focused and its where the trillions of dollars that the Pentagon can't account for are laundered. But speaking in terms of actual legal warfare, no, not yet.

Let's not let the government tell us what we're seeing in order to create preconditions for a war. They don't get to show a video of a boat and tell us it was full of bad people and bad things and so they killed them and if we don't like that then we must also be criminals. That is precisely what they are doing, and we can never let them live any of this down.

New Record!

ICE has set a new record! The largest single-location workplace raid in the history of the Department of Homeland Security! Wowsers trousers, well done, boys! We really saved our country from… uh…?

ICE agents raided a factory project by Hyundai and LG in Georgia. The factory is under construction, set to open in a year or so to produce batteries for electric vehicles. The factory itself is not yet operational, and workers from Hyundai have been taking work trips to the US to prep the location and get it operational.

The factory itself is Georgia's largest economic development project, and despite what most of the reporting about this sounds like, it's not like this was some sweep of foreign nationals who were taking jobs away. They were in the process of investing in setting up jobs for people in the US to have before being swept up by ICE.

"…with this announcement, which is now the largest economic development project in our state's history, we will continue working to make Georgia the premier destination for quality companies who are creating the jobs of today, tomorrow, and beyond."
—Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, May 20, 2022

After the US detained hundreds of workers, the president of South Korea got involved. The South Korean government worked with the US to charter a flight to get the folks home, but also made it clear that this was fucking ridiculous.

While ICE maintains that many of the workers had invalid paperwork, such as not having the proper visa to work, South Korea has called out the US for having shitty paperwork processes which cause undue mess with actually making good on the hundreds of billions of dollars they're investing in our country. Many of the workers were reportedly here on a visa, but may have performed work outside of the approved scope of their visa.

Speakin' Of Jobs…

The Jobs report came in for August, and it was pretty abysmal. Estimates were low already, expecting about 75,000 news jobs. The report itself showed only 22,000 new jobs, with prior months revised cumulatively downwards, largely from June's job creation numbers dropping into the negatives.

This is the first time in years since there has been negative job growth, the last time being during Trump's first term around the start of the COVID pandemic.

Within the lines is another sinister little tidbit though: the decaying employment landscape is especially hostile towards Black women. SHOCK! Black women saw an outsized number of job losses. The "anti-DEI" push has Black women at the forefront of their targets.

You may recall that the last jobs report was so bad for the Trump administration that Trump himself decided to fire the head of the agency that produces the reports. He's been doing everything he can to plug his ears and close his eyes in the face of his decisions blowing up around him. Telling people they aren't hungry only goes so far.

I NEVER SAID THE THING I SAID

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr is a well documented anti-vaxxer whose unscientific approach to public health is considered a threat to humanity by his own family, let alone a global coalition of medical research specialists.

But anyway, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, our head of Health and Human Services, was the target of a recent Senate hearing in which he was grilled by Democrats and Republicans alike on questions such as, "do vaccines work" and "how much bear meat did you consume this morning?"

There's about a million clips of Senators and RFK just yelling back and forth at each other, almost all of them following the same script:

SENATOR: "You said this thing, I have the quote in front of me."
RFK: "I never said that."
SENATOR: "You did though, it's literally on video televised last week"
RFK: "You're outrageous, and also you are the problem and I am the solution"
SENATOR: "Well, I guess that's all I can do here"

During the hearing he did most of his greatest hits, such as playing dumb about his well understood anti-vaxx stance, pretending to not know if the COVID vaccine helped at all, and making sweeping claims about the health of the American public which sound right but are essentially just a trojan horse to get you to drink milk straight from the udder.

But on the topic of RFK, he sent shares of Kenvue, the company who makes Tylenol, down 10% in a day due to rumors that he plans to release a report linking Tylenol usage in mothers to children with autism. This is unsupported by virtually all research as we know it.

Elsewhere

Japan is Down a Prime

Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has stepped down after finalizing work on the tariff trade deal with the US. Ishiba has called for his party to hold an emergency leadership election to replace him.

The leading party is doing what politicians do best and self destructing a bit. Right leaning members of the party have been calling for his resignation as they've been losing their grip since he took office in October of 2024, losing control of the lower and upper houses in government.

I won't pretend to be an expert on Japanese domestic politics and policy, but I do want to appreciate this quote from the guy real quick:

I have consistently stated that I do not intend to cling to this position, and that I would make a decision at the appropriate time after accomplishing what needed to be done
—Shigeru Ishiba

IMAGINE THAT.

Earthquake in Afghanistan

Massive earthquakes have rocked eastern Afghanistan for days, starting with a 6.0 magnitude quake on August 31st with aftershocks hitting throughout the week.

Thousands of homes have been destroyed, in part due to the lack of infrastructure in the region. At time of writing, the death toll has passed 2,200, with thousands more injured.

Aid groups and rescuers began arriving in the region throughout the week but had to pause efforts occasionally due to the additional quakes. Unfortunately, between the destruction and the already difficult terrain, it's slow going.

A map showing where the main earthquake hit

This region is unfortunately prone to quakes due to is proximity to a fault line. However, this quake was uniquely shallow, which is largely what contributed to the extensive destruction.

My heart goes out to those suffering from this true force of nature. It inspires me to know that people are out there working to provide aid, comfort, and relief even in the face of such tragedy and danger. Stay righteous, y'all.

Gaming

Silksong is out. You are either extremely aware of that, or you're asking, "what is Silksong?"

You know how there's some franchises that just break the internet? Something like a massively popular YouTuber releasing some huge unexpected video, or a K-pop band dropping some huge ARG, or the decades-long joke about Half Life 3 or Grand Theft Auto 6?

Silksong is like that.

There's a game called Hollow Knight in which you play as a bug and explore places. It's quite tranquil and welcoming. That was a joke. Think Dark Souls but… bug. Anyway this game was massively popular, and a sequel called "Hollow Knight: Silksong" was announced in February of 2019. What followed was years and years of release speculation, reschedules, and speculation. Finally, it got a release date: September 4th—which they announced on August 21st.

The sudden release announcement and the hype around the game was so wild that some other indie games actually rescheduled their own launch to not compete. Then the day of the release came, and players were so thirsty for Silksong that digital storefronts across platforms crashed, including Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo.

So best of luck to all you bug-'splorers out there! Enjoy your silky song.

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Thanks again, now let's see what the weather is like, yeah?