The NEW! Nintendo Switch XL Plus 2

Uh Whoops, We Lost a Voyager (for a bit)

So we accidentally kinda lost contact with the Voyager 2, y'know that spacecraft that is just supposed to head out into the depths of the universe forever?

Turns out the operators who interface with the satellite accidentally sent the wrong command and shifted the satellite's dish to the wrong place. It takes several hours to actually reach the thing with a signal, and our only real option at this point is to just blast the correcting command generally everywhere that the Voyager 2 might pick it up.

Not all is lost though—scientists know that as humans, we have a tendency to fuck up. So they have a failsafe in place as the craft auto-adjusts itself to face back towards Earth every few months. So if we can't quite send it a text message, it'll at least hit us up later on.

Nintendo's Next Console

You may be playing on a Switch 2 as soon as 2024 as we learn a tiny bit more about the console. We really don't know at this point if it'll be a literal "Switch 2" since you can truly never guess Nintendo's next move (think: WiiU, "NEW! Nintendo 3DS XL", etc).

Rumor has it that the console will indeed be playable in a handheld mode, which lends some credibility to the notion of a "Switch 2," and we know the screen will be an LCD panel and there will be support for transferring over your Nintendo account from your Switch. Does that mean backwards compatibility? Maybe! But knowing Nintendo its just as likely that all Switch games will be remotely deleted from your existing console and you'll have to like pay some kind of ransom to get your games back on the Switch 2 or some shit like that.

All in all, I'm cautiously hype. I literally just want a Switch with 4k output support when docked and some more modern online functionality. (I am deeply aware that is not going to happen).

Mr. Beast Sues Over Nasty Patties

Okay so Mr. Beast, YouTube sensation and guy-who-should-give-me-tons-of-money extraordinaire has been expanding his empire for a while now. He's got chocolate bars, merch out the proverbial wazoo, and even his own burger chain, MrBeast Burger.

Unfortunately, it turns out his burgers are uh, damn near inedible. They were set up as a partnership with a ghost kitchen company and according to even his most die-hard fans, they are often disgusting.

A "ghost kitchen" is basically a system where you run a pseudo-restaurant out of an actual restaurant, leveraging food apps like Grubhub or whatever to let people order food from your brand, which is then prepared by a 3rd party and delivered. However, Virtual Dining Concepts—the company MrBeast partnered with for his burgers—did basically no quality control and now they're being sued by the Mister himself.

It's not really a surprise though. Ghost kitchens were huge for a hot second during the depths of COVID-19 since every restaurant was trying to do whatever they could to stay afloat. And if you have some company seeking to capitalize on that, you're gonna end up with wild fluctuations in quality unless you personally vet each kitchen and routinely check in. Smells to me like a case of "we gotta hit the market and EXPAAAAAND" and viewing restaurants as merely collectible resources rather than valuable operation anchors.

I actually considered ordering a MrBeast burger a year or so ago. I am fairly glad I dodged that bullet.

The Niger Coup Continues

The UK has now cut off aid to Niger as the ongoing coup situation is clearly showing that one of the priorities is to cut ties with the west at large. Hell, there were even citizens of Niger protesting (or "attacking" depending on what interpretation you wanna use) at the French embassy, causing France to pull people out of the country.

What makes the situation even more complex is that now, Mali and Burkina Faso have expressed direct support for the military coup in Niger, while other countries especially in western Africa have signaled that they will intervene to destabilize the coup and reinstate the president of the country. Meanwhile, western powers like the US, France and UK are pulling out of the region because it is suddenly inconvenient.

The history of colonization in Africa is… still very much going on today, really. While this situation is a mess and is leading to international intervention from other parts of the continent and abroad, something has to eventually give. Much of the west has and continues to pillage Africa for natural resources while paying a pittance in "aid" to the countries in return.

This could honestly get real nasty real quick if history around countries attempting to distance themselves from "western influence" repeats itself. Again. Again.

On This day…

On this day in 1776, the United States Declaration of Independence was signed. While it was adopted on July 4th, there are conflicting reports about when everyone actually signed.

According to a letter written by Benjamin Rush, at least a large portion of the actual signing took place on August 2nd 1776.

Rush describes the event as somber, since everyone signing it basically assumed they were signing their death warrant. One rather large signer, Benjamin Harrison, cracked a joke about his weight being a boon since he'd die faster when they all get hanged.

Here's the Weather

More Stuff

• The SEC is suing Coinbase but first asked them to stop trading every cryptocoin except Bitcoin
• There's a uh… leprosy outbreak in Florida
• Paul Reubens (Peewee Herman) has died at the age of 70
• A weird looking bear at a zoo in China has people thinking its a staff member in a bear costume and has driven a huge spike in traffic as people try to figure it out
• BBC News is trying out Mastodon and made their own specific instance
• Meanwhile, Twitter (X) is suing an anti-hate group who is trying to conduct hate speech research about Twitter
• The Euclid space telescope is preparing to blow our minds and seek truths about Dark Matter