Wrath of the Sun

Listen to today's episode on the Stuff Keeps Happening podcast

The Sun's Strength Strikes

The sun is losing its goddamn mind as there's a "G4 geomagnetic storm" which has been going on these past few days. Over the weekend, Earthfolk more southerly than usual were treated to a northern lights show, but if you are the kind of person who lives on the surface of the sun, you may want to avoid the "magnetically complex sunspot cluster", which is apparently around NOAA region 3664.

I know, I couldn't believe it either.

To give a sense of what any of this means, the sun is doing solar things. A solar flare / solar storm activity is causing the Earth's atmosphere to get all hot and bothered, and that makes the aurora happen. And if you forgot just how MASSIVE the bright thing in our sky is: the storm on the sun's surface—which is a tiny portion of the surface, mind you—is 16 times the diameter of Earth.

I don't even have a measuring tape that could measure that, it's wild.

Lol Taxes

According to recently published data by the NYT, American billionaires now pay a lower effective tax rate than the working class for the first time ever.

The drop in tax rate for the ultra-rich has been precipitous since the 60's and 70's. Oh, and I wonder what that sudden extreme dip in the 80's was from. I guess we'll never know (Reagan).

We've been cutting taxes on the rich since before I was born. I feel like we can probably re-evaluate our strat at this point. Especially as billionaires continue to find and fund loopholes, or just live off of wealth growth rather than income.

Illegally Minding Your Own Business

We're gonna run this one again, apparently. I thought we already did this, but let's go again, shall we?

Roger Fortson was a 23 year old US Air Force member. He was murdered by a cop in his own apartment after someone called the cops due to a "disturbance." A cop showed up at Roger's door, banged on it a few times, then barged in and shot Roger 6 times. Roger died at the hospital.

Inside the apartment, Roger was home alone having a video chat with someone, not causing a disturbance. After hearing the aggressive knocking and seeing nobody through the peephole, Roger retrieved his legally-owned firearm for self defense in his home. The cop then burst through the door, saw the apartment's resident—who lives there—holding a gun—which he legally is allowed to do—and the cop murdered him. Again: in his own home.

Just your average US cop killing an enlisted US service member for sitting quietly in his own apartment while legally owning a gun in America. If it seems like this is a familiar story, you're probably thinking of the cop who murdered a different black man in his own home while he was doing nothing, after the cop had mistaken his apartment for her own.

Hookups and Pivots

Tinder is out. Hinge is in. This changes basically nothing for the owners of Tinder and Hinge, because its the same owners.

Basically every dating app is owned by "Match Group." Match Group has seen a drop in Tinder activity, as the target demographic is getting tired of it's bullshit and moving to Hinge, which has a bit more of a reputation for establishing relationships over hookups.

Match Group owns a dozen or so dating apps, each with its own target audience. Tinder and Hinge are pretty close in audience, but as attitude continues to sour towards Tinder as they roll out bizarre features, we're seeing a shift. Tinder is still WAY bigger as far as paying customers go, but is seeing a decline of just under 10% of their paying users over the past year. By contrast, Hinge has seen about a 30% jump in the same period.

Either way, this is a pretty solid instance of the illusion of choice. You can choose to use any of this one company's dating apps! Isn't that lovely?

Gaming News

• A Black Lotus Magic the Gathering card sold for $3 Million
• Nintendo has finally acknowledged the Switch 2 (or whatever it'll be called)
• Nintendo is removing their share-to-Twitter function of the Switch, following the PS5 and Xbox doing the same thing
• Warner Bros was threatening to remove a bunch of Adult Swim games from stores, but decided against it after everyone was like "uh, the hell?"
• Continuing the backlash against required secondary sign-ins, Ghost of Tsushima's PC launch is in trouble as Steam is refunding sales in some countries

Here's the Weather

More Stuff

• Among their other ongoing issues, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft's launch was stopped due to a faulty part
• Apple has a new iPad Pro with a new chip in it and its still an iPad
• The Boy Scouts of America are now calling themselves "Scouting America"
• TikTok is suing the US over the US's attempted ban
• That Panera lemonade that killed multiple people? They're dropping it.
• Elon Musk's brain implant company "Neuralink" implanted its first brain chip in a human, but the chip has partially detached
• They're making a spinoff of The Office about a newspaper publisher
• Researchers have used machine learning to decode whale sounds
• Critical Role is launching its own version of Dropout, basically, called "Beacon"
• US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is upset that people are mean to him, and says that DC is a "hideous place"
• The US government has stated that Israel's use of the weapons we've given them is "inconsistent" with human rights laws. Aw, beans. I guess there's nothing we can do.

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