Economy

What Goes Up

Tech CEOs push for endless spending and ask for us all to simply ignore the lack of revenue or value they're creating

Endeavorance

10 Nov 2025 — 9 min read

I removed the label from the side of my mattress, but Stuff still Happened.

So what's up?

Must Come Down

I talked a bit last time about how Nvidia recently became the world's first $5 Trillion market cap company and how things are looking quite bubbly these days across big tech investments.

Well guess what? 💥

Meta's Nosedive

Meta took a massive stock price hit over this past week, dropping 11% in a day after Meta's earning call, in which Mark Zuckerberg failed to convince investors that the current investment in AI is worth it. Zuck actually made clear that they're just getting started with their AI spend, despite what investors see as unsustainable spending already.

The right thing to do is to try to accelerate this to make sure that we have the compute that we need, both for the AI research and new things that we're doing, and to try to get to a different state on our compute stance on the core business
—Mark Zuckerberg on the Meta earnings call

Sam Altman's Faceplant

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has spent years now promising that "Artificial General Intelligence" (AGI) is just on the horizon, and as long as we continue to invest in AI spending, we'll get to it eventually, and then we'll… something.

Not quite clear on what happens then aside from the tech bros who expect everyone to get on board with like uploading their consciousness into a hive mind or something idk.

Unfortunately for the Alternate Man himself, reality has a way of catching up, and OpenAI is finding itself in a position where it essentially can't make money. With the myriad spending commitments they've set up, they're looking at well over a trillion dollars in spending over the next decade. Unless they can increase revenue by nearly 3000% by 2029, it's not looking particularly LOVELY for their future financial wellbeing.

The Value is Lacking

All the while, businesses aren't seeing the miraculous return on investment that AI companies keep claiming they'll see.

"Replace your workforce with AI!" shouts a tech consultant, spinning the CEO class into a frenzy of appearing as though their sheet metal factory is somehow now an AI-first company.

Top tech companies ramped up their spending to try and race to some finish line as fast as they can, but unfortunately nobody seems to really know what that finish line is. While the AI companies push the value of their product, the reality is that businesses are still trying to figure out what exactly to do with AI, and how exactly it fits. The majority of AI pilot programs crash and burn despite a few massive success stories to break the mold.

A Confluence of Hubris and Disinformation

Here's my take: I don't think OpenAI is going anywhere, and I don't think Meta is going anywhere. I don't think we're seeing the bubble burst just yet, but I do think we're going to see a major correction as the knock-on effects from Meta's stock troubles combined with Sam Altman's inability to shut the fuck up rattles investors.

In this era of $5 Trillion companies, Elon Musk somehow winning an up-to-$1 Trillion pay package from Tesla while the continued removal and undermining of basic support services like nutritional benefits, we're essentially watching as a handful of Tech CEOs have convinced investors to just trust me bro as they try to sell the worlds largest technological snake oil.

The problem is that when you con a planet, you can't quite skip town.

What Else

Election Results

Dear Reader…
While I wrote and prepared this draft over the past week, Senate Democrats just last night voted to move forward with a Republican plan to end the government shutdown, effectively rendering the entire shutdown meaningless.

Suffice it to say that Dem voters (and also Dem congresspeople and also the DNC and also many Dem senators) aren't particularly happy with this move, especially given the outright mandate voters gave this past Tuesday (as covered in this section).

I'll post some kind of update on this as the details get clearer, but for now, know that the shutdown does not end immediately from this. Still, the likely result is that due to the Republican spending bill, millions of Americans will pay thousands of dollars more per year for their already-unaffordable-and-subpar healthcare.

~ Endea V. Orance, Esq.

This past Tuesday, the United States had its Election Day, which is a thing that actually does happen outside of presidential elections, surprisingly.

Democrats outperformed across the board, and in the case of New York City, the Democratic nominee won with historic numbers, despite the party actively undermining his campaign since he's… looks to the side to check for anyone listening before whispering: a socialist.

Or, democratic socialist at least.

Zohran Mamdani will be the new mayor of New York City, having pulled over one million votes in the city with a population a bit over eight million.

His primary challenger—disgraced former governor of New York and serial sex pest Andrew Cuomo—was a sore loser from the primary election and ran again as a third party, enjoying endorsements from centrist Dems and conservatives alike.

Billionaires rallied HARD against Mamdani, spending millions of dollars to push back against his campaign which largely targeted cost of living and making NYC more equitable for its normal citizens. And in response to his victory, conservatives and billionaires have floated denaturalization followed by deportation of Mamdani, as well as a growing chorus of men calling to repeal women's right to vote (the 19th amendment of the US constitution) as young women were among the largest voting demographic for Mamdani.

And of course, everyone—Democrats and Republicans alike—cranked the Islamophobia to 11 towards the end of the race, associating Mamdani (a 34 year old Muslim) with 9/11 (when he would have been 10).

All in all, a very normal and healthy adult response to a man becoming mayor of a city with policies focused on addressing the cost of living crisis. Policies which are deeply boring and standard in other countries.

UPS Explosion and Restricted Travel

In the early evening in Louisville, Kentucky, a freight aircraft operated by UPS crashed in a dramatic explosion, killing the crew on board as well as at least 12 people on the ground.

Just as the crew had begun takeoff, one of the plane's engines came loose from the wing, sparking a fire and causing the catastrophe in just a matter of seconds. Since then, UPS and FedEx have grounded all of their aircraft of the same model (MD-11) out of an abundance of caution.

Investigations are ongoing and will take a while to come out, but that's what we know about the cause. What created the conditions for this to happen is another question.

Meanwhile, the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is mandating a nationwide reduction in commercial flights, starting at a cut of 4% of operations at 40 airports across the country. The plan is to ramp the operational cuts to 10% by November 14th, which would bring turbulence to travel plans by the thousands of flights per day, rivaled only by the early days of COVID regarding impact to air travel.

The very official FAA logo for real for real

This is happening because of the ongoing (???) US government shutdown. Air traffic controllers aren't being paid during the shutdown (because this country is fucking stupid), so the current administration has decided to issue this flight reduction order as their latest move to raise the stakes of the shutdown in the hopes that Democrats will vote for the Republican-written funding bill which would cause many American families to see healthcare costs spike by the hundreds or thousands of dollars per year.

Gaza

I didn't expect much from the "Ceasefire" between Israel and Gaza. And that's proving to have been the correct stance.

Israel has continued attacking the Gaza strip repeatedly, despite the ceasefire agreement brokered by the United States.

One of the most notable attacks took place on October 28th, where Israeli forces shelled large portions of the Gaza strip, killing hundreds of Palestinians. Israel claims—without providing evidence—that it was in response to activity from Hamas.

The aid which is supposed to make it's way into Gaza is also still not happening. They're letting in a small trickle so they can point at it and be like, "see?" But in reality, only a fraction of the agreed upon aid trucks are making it through Israeli blockades. The Rafah crossing remains closed. Food, medicine, and fuel is sitting around in massive warehouses waiting to be allowed in to the territory.

All the while, Israel is dealing the political fallout of one of their top government officials leaking footage of Israeli soldiers grotesquely sexually assaulting a Palestinian prisoner while using riot shields to block line of sight. The leaked footage sparked outrage from the Israeli government—specifically outrage that the official leaked the footage, not about the contents of the footage. Netanyahu characterized it as "perhaps the most severe public relations attack that the state of Israel has experienced since its establishment."

Far right coalitions and politicians in Israel have rallied behind the offending soldiers, attempting to break them out of custody or otherwise endorsing the behavior as a necessary tool to fight "terrorists."

Ultimately, I don't really know how to reconcile this level of repugnance. So let's instead talk about video games.

Gaming

Just wanted to take a moment to cover a handful of things from the GAMING world, as I had a good few things come across my feed.

Grant Theft Release Date

Of course, I would like to start with Grand Theft Auto 6 having been delayed again for another year, with the new release date set for November 19th 2026. I bring this up primarily because GTA 6 getting delayed was one of my predictions for 2025. Granted, I said it in the video: that's an easy one. Anyway, sorry for anyone out there who was expecting to play GTA this holiday season. That's genuinely on you, at this point.

Squeenix

Next up, tons o' layoffs at Square Enix, especially in the US and UK where jobs were cut as the Squenix shifts their focus towards their core Japan development teams. Square Enix also made clear that it was their goal to handle 70% of their quality assurance work by AI by 2027.

Interestingly, research generally shows that gamers are neutral about the use of AI in video games, though we've not quite seen the actual impact of generative AI on large, mainstream titles in a way that people would notice it. I'll be very curious to see if that sentiment changes as things get sloppier over time. Hell, just look at any internet search result these days. Abysmal.

It's A Switch, But Again. Of Course It Sold Well

Nintendo released new sales information for the Nintendo Switch 2, and it's not going to make a lot of internet gamers happy, because the Switch 2 remains the strongest console launch of all time.

In just four months, Nintendo has sold 10.36 million units. By comparison, the PS5 took 8 months to sell that many units, though of course the PS5 was also infamously hard to find due to supply chain issues.

Ultimately, the Switch is aging out of it's lifespan for a lot of folks who bought one early on, and now here's "A Switch but updated and can do 4k and plays your existing library." It was always going to sell like hotcakes.

Is Nintendo a greedy, litigious company? Yep. Is the Switch 2 expensive and lacking in some areas? Yep. Also, the Switch 2 sold 10 million units in four months. Consumer electronics n such.