Some More News - SMN: We Just Love Ignoring Disasters Until They Happen

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

Hi. In today's episode, we belatedly celebrate love in order to avoid a disaster that already happened. It's a bridge-collapsingly romantic Valentine's Day Climate Catastrophe Special! Support SOME MORE NEWS: http://www.patreon.com/SomeMoreNews We now have a MERCH STORE! Check it out here: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/somemorenews Don't sleep on savings. Brooklinen's Presidents' Day Sale is right around the corner. Listening after the sale? You can still get the deals of your dreams at http://www.Brooklinen.com with promo code MORENEWS! Secure your online data TODAY by visiting http://expressvpn.com/somenews. That's http://expressvpn.com/somenews and you can get an extra three months FREE. You can get 15% off your Raycon order at http://BUYRAYCON.com/somenews. That's http://BUYRAYCON.com/somenews to save 15% on Raycons. Athletic Greens is going to give you an immune supporting FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit http://athleticgreens.com/morenews today. Executive Producer - Katy Stoll (@KatyStoll). Written by Ella Yurman (@ElYurman), Katie Goldin (@KatieGoldin), Lon Harris (@Lons), and Tom Reimann (@startthemachine). Directed by Will Gordh (@will_gordh). Edited by Gregg Meller. Graphics by F. Clint DeNisco. Head Writer - David Christopher Bell. Producer - Nick Mundy. Researcher - Marco Siler-Gonzales (@mijo_marco). Associate Producer - Quincy Tucker (@LTP313). Follow us on social media! Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenewsSupport the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I don't really care, man. I will pay you 50 extra dollars if you can get them here today, please. Take the bus or something? Okay, thank you. Hi, sorry, everyone. It's kind of been a full day for me. Turns out there's a holiday specifically

for celebrating romantic partners. And that day was a few days ago. And so I'm just kind of panicking here, you know, trying to get some last-minute romantic gifts delivered. Sort of been in the old doghouse ever since I invoked interdimensional and puppet characters with no boundary issues, so I'm trying to plan a nice, quiet evening with me and my significant other, but man, I did drop the ball. One of those popcorn balls in the shower this morning and clogged the drain. So that didn't win me any points. Also, in all my running around, I kind of sort of didn't have time to put together an episode.

But I will handle it, all right? You know, how hard is it to whip up some news, you know? We got, okay, all right, focus. Focus, got to do the news. Got to do it. We're going to do it. And everyone's counting on you. We got too much news.

Not too much news. We'll get the news out here and we could do, this is all fart news. This news sucks. Here's some fart news. Got a bunch of fart papers. All right, I got, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna make the news better.

I'm gonna, we'll make the news better. We'll make the fart news better. We'll sexy up the news. Fuckable news. News you can fuck. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That works. Sexy news.

Sexy news. Yeah. Put your arm around someone special and slip into the news. Here is some sexy news. New England was slammed with the nor'easter last month, cutting power to hundreds of thousands and killing several. Wow, not sexy, that sucks. So sorry.

Anyway, states like Maine and New York and Massachusetts all experienced hurricane force winds and high levels of snowfall, delaying flights and compromising Cape Cod saltwater taffy rations. And you know, that's winter. New England generally expects and plans for these things, or rather the residents expect and plan

as opposed to the actual infrastructure, which not great. In Massachusetts alone, there are at least 481 unsafe bridges on top of billions being allocated for fixing roads and pipes. And of course, in Pittsburgh, we saw an entire bridge collapse, thankfully not killing anyone,

but quite appropriately, hours before Joe Biden, the president, was scheduled to visit to specifically talk about infrastructure in the state. And that super checks out. The bridge in question was said to be in poor condition and needed 1.5 million in repairs, which,

you know, maybe they should have done earlier. So yeah, hot, hot, juicy stuff. I guess this is our first sexy news story to cover. So let's, let's get nasty. Our infrastructure can't handle the winter. Ooh, baby, that is some steamy, icy, super cold stuff. So along with this Nor'easter news, it appears that we're having a real less sexy time with our roads this winter. Early last month, a record winter storm in Northern Virginia dropped nearly seven inches of snow and ice in and around Washington, DC,

causing a major backup on Interstate 95 that left thousands of people trapped in their cars. Some were stranded for more than a full day, including Virginia Democratic Senator and teen heartthrob, Tim Kaine. Kaine was stuck on the Interstate for 27 hours, enough time to rewatch all the good episodes of Lost in time for the inevitable HBO Max reunion special.

Just kidding, there's only one bad episode a season. Much like the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815, the people marooned on I-95 fell victim to a total lack of planning and foresight that left them trapped longer than they ever should have been. Senator Kane told reporters he stayed alive during the harrowing ordeal by feasting on a bottle

of Dr. Pepper and a single orange, a meal commonly known as the terry-o-quin. These lost jokes getting you horny? Cause I've very little to work with here, so I hope they are. So in addition to encasing thousands of cars in snow and ice, the storm caused at least 867 crashes and left 846 disabled vehicles

along a staggering 50 miles of I-95. The storm covered other areas of the state in more than 15 inches of snow and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and Tennessee. The Virginia Department of Transportation, or VDOT if you like to party,

failed to pretreat the roads with salt the night before the storm because the forecast had called for rain, which would have washed away the salt mixture. When the rain unexpectedly transformed into a heap of Bing Crosby horse shit, VDOT crews were quickly overwhelmed by the rapidly falling snow,

leading to the cluster fudgesicle that forced former vice presidential hopeful Tim Kaine to spend a night slurping oranges and pissing in the woods. Virginia's then governor, Ralph Northam, who recently conceded the gubernatorial mansion to a racist 19th century balloonist, faced severe criticism for the disaster, particularly his failure to deploy the National Guard

even though hundreds of motorists were trapped in their cars overnight in freezing temperatures. Additionally, VDOT came under fire for its slow response and for not alerting state emergency officials to the severity of the situation, which prevented food, water, medical aid, and gasoline from being distributed to stranded drivers. That really seems like something that should have been done after the first eight hours, or by the time Tim Kaine reached the episode where Mr. Echo gets killed by the smoke monster.

It's not a chronological rewatch, he's just skipping around. Dude, spoilers! Oh, I'm sorry, it's been like 15 years. Anyway, so how did the state of Virginia get so thoroughly pantsed by this storm? For starters, VDOT is almost comically corrupt. A recent federal investigation uncovered years of bribery, extortion,

and cocaine dealing involving former VDOT official Anthony Willey and his deputy, Kenneth Adams. Among many other things, Willey was demanding kickbacks from snowplow contractors in exchange for lucrative contracts. After Willey and Adams were convicted on public corruption charges, one of the contractors, who also received prison time, said that corruption was rampant and ongoing

and part of the culture of the agency. It's not clear whether corruption had any direct impact on VDOT's bungling of the I-95 snowstorm, but if I were a betting man, I'd say that the cocaine-slinging transportation department perhaps didn't do its best. But even without cartoonishly crooked government officials calling the shots, dystopian traffic jams like this one

are probably going to become more common, thanks in part to the worsening effects of climate change. Ooh, yeah, honey, but I'm talking about that steamy hot planet Earth. That stratosphere is barely hanging on, you dirty planet, you, you dangerously dirty planet. You get us all so wet because of the flooding. In addition to giving embarrassing necktie dweebs

something to tweet about from the Senate floor, climate change can increase snowfall during winter storms and cause extreme cold snaps like the one that transformed a simple Virginia thunderstorm into a frosty fuckasaurus. Additionally, there is a theory that a warming Arctic is weakening the polar jet stream and allowing frigid air to penetrate,

sexy, further south, less sexy. If that's true, it means more extreme weather events are starting to affect roadways in states that don't normally experience them, like Virginia and Texas, where last year an intense blizzard laid waste to the state's roads and power grid, leaving millions without electricity or running water and sending said necktie dweebs

fleeing to Mexico to seek shelter in warmer climates. Oh, hey, funny new tweet you got there about the time you left your state while people died, Ted. So glad you're a lawmaker, good job. The very sad icing atop that weirdly bearded cake is the fact that the entirety of these United States, including Virginia, are completely unprepared for any kind of infrastructure stress. Because although infrastructure is a vital area of national health, the U.S. has never been terribly

interested in maintaining it. As I alluded to before, a current report from the American Road and Transportation Builders Association identifies more than 43,000 structurally deficient bridges in the U.S. that are in poor condition and in need of urgent repairs, as well as over 220,000 bridges that need some degree of rehabilitation, if not outright replacement. Many of these bridges are more than half a century old, and like nuclear reactors and high school prom attendees, this is one of the areas of our society where ageism is not only appropriate, but pretty necessary.

What I'm getting at here is that bridge collapses, like we saw in Pittsburgh, were super not an isolated event. There's actually been a handful of similar stories in the past few decades that have ranged in severity, including the catastrophic I-35 bridge failure in Minneapolis in 2007 that killed 13 people and injured 145 others. And just like we're probably going to see a repeat of the I-95 fiasco that left thousands of people stranded on a snowy pass like a bunch of settlers

manifesting their destiny, we're probably going to start seeing bridges fail more regularly too. It's a perfect storm of climate change and infrastructure, which I'm sorry to say are two of the most deeply unsexy topics we can possibly discuss. It's like watching a youth minister do a public access puppet show about the night that you were conceived.

Except unsexy. To paraphrase the father of the internet, infrastructure, like climate change, is an inopportune problem. Something that demands a considerable number of resources without producing any immediately quantifiable results. Addressing both issues requires long-term investments, a phrase that strikes the ears of capitalist lawmakers like Rumpelstiltskin hearing his own

name. Capitalism fosters a huge impatience for long-term investments, which is why infrastructure and climate change are issues the U.S. continuously puts off in favor of grotesque military spending and tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, until eventually it gets to the point we're at now, where an unusual cold snap can leave thousands of people stranded on the highway for over 24 hours because we're ill-equipped to manage these increasingly extreme weather events.

And I don't mean extreme like in the cool way, I mean extreme in the bad way. So I don't know, I guess the moral here is that in addition to keeping a roadside kit in your glove box, everyone should probably start stocking their vehicles with canned goods, thermal blankets and flame throwers. Oh, and a can opener, I guess, if you have weak grip

or a less powerful set of jaws. And better throw in a box of chocolates and some roses, maybe a DVD copy of Hitch, you know, for Valentine's Day, I guess, or whatever. It's just generally a good idea to keep an emergency copy of Hitch in the holster. Perhaps your special someone will even like one of the probably very good products

we're about to discuss in these ads, right? That's as good a segue as any, or well, I'm sure there are better segues. Point is, remember, this was all totally unplanned, so I think I'm doing pretty well. Knock, knock, open up in the name of the law. It's me, Professor Cozy of the Comfort Police. I've been possessed by the ghost of George Washington

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At Ghost President Noise! Hello, news folk. You know what really salts my apples? Not being able to watch the film Das Boot whenever I want. Sure. Yeah, I guess I could rent it, but why should I have to pay for a German war drama? Netflix has it, but only in the UK. We Americans

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so you can get three extra months of ExpressVPN free. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash some news. ExpressVPN dot com slash some news. Okay, we're back and we're talking about the news. The sexy news. Penetration, rubbing, pegging, etc. What's our next sexy news to talk about? Kazakhstan's power grid problems. rubbing, pegging, et cetera. What's our next sexy news to talk about?

Kazakhstan's power grid problems. And I came. So you may or may not have heard about widespread civil unrest in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan back in January. Dozens of anti-government rioters were killed, 353 people were injured, and troops were even sent in from the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization to stabilize major urban areas, including the country's largest city, Almaty.

The government has made some policy concessions to the protesters, but as this protest movement is about much more than the actual rise in fuel prices that were announced on the 1st of January. It's gonna be very difficult for the government to address the myriad grievances that we see coming today and those are both political and socio-economic in nature. A lot going on there. Former Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev lost his post as head of the country's security council during all of this, which, you know, bummer LinkedIn update for him. And while there's clearly a broad list of grievances the people there are voicing, protests were initially sparked by the Kazakh government's decision to lift price caps on

liquefied petroleum gas, boosting the local fuel industry, but also causing energy prices to nearly double overnight. A real turgid, oily inflation of prices if you wanna get risque, which I am being told that you do not. But even after goosing their native natural gas industry, Kazakhstan, along with Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, still suffered major power outages this winter when their interconnected electrical grid suffered unexpected shortages.

Subway cars were trapped in tunnels, skiers got stuck on lifts, vibrators were left dry and unbuzzing, airports got shut down, and even traffic lights went out. But mainly, that vibrator thing was the problem. At the root of all of Kazakhstan's recent energy grid problems, well, that was, you guessed it,

muay, oops, Bitcoin, sorry. The sexiest coin. The least sexiest coin, opposite of sexy. You see, China banned Bitcoin mining and transactions back in June, 2021, even at a time when it was responsible for about three fourths of all of the crypto mining happening around the globe. We of course can't read their minds yet, but they had all kinds of potential reasons for doing this.

China's Communist Party is famously risk averse and hostile to decentralized technologies over which it lacks control. A lot of power and funds that were intended for other things were being illegally or quasi-legally diverted to Bitcoin interests. And miners sucking up all that juice threatened Chinese President Xi Jinping's promise

to make the country carbon neutral by 2060. Or maybe they just think Bitcoin is a stinker of an idea. I don't know. So when they had to get the hell out of Doge, get it? Yeah, you do. A lot of these miners jumped over to relatively nearby Kazakhstan,

which was also largely friendly for Bitcoin mining. It's a cold environment, so you have to spend less money on massive fans to cool all of your hardworking server farms. The business friendly government showed little interest in regulating the nascent crypto industry. It's filled with old warehouses and factories where mining rigs could be easily installed.

And energy in the country was inexpensive and abundant because it's mostly powered by filthy but cheap coal, an older but naughty energy source. Kilf. Ah yeah, everyone wants to literally fuck chunks of coal. The Financial Times estimates that newcomers brought more than 87,000 mining rigs into Kazakhstan in the immediate aftermath of China's ban.

And this all worked really great for a little while until it didn't at all. According to Kazakhstan's the immediate aftermath of China's ban. And this all worked really great for a little while until it didn't at all. According to Kazakhstan's energy minister, Magzum Mirzagaliev, electricity consumption in the country increased by 7% from 2020 to 2021 due to the sudden sharp increase in crypto mining centers. Mirzagaliev also noted, and this is key, that while the mining put a huge strain

on the local energy grid, it didn't translate into positive socioeconomic activity for the actual country of Kazakhstan. After all, the miners can just take their new Bitcoins and spend them anywhere or hoard them or use them for more apes, which then immediately gets stolen because that's apparently a thing that happens all the time.

Point is the Kazakhstan situation was akin to opening a coffee shop, passing out free wifi, and then watching nobody buy coffee, and in fact, steal your tables and chairs instead. In the hopes of quelling the protests, the government of Kazakhstan imposed a five-day nationwide internet blackout that wildly succeeded in making protesters more angry.

But at least it was extremely costly for the Bitcoin mining companies, yeah? By one estimate, miners lost $4.8 million for every 24 hours without internet access. As a final death blow, the government eventually cut power to Bitcoin mining companies through the end of January in order to shore up the grid.

And that brings us to the present day. These Bitcoin miners recognize that they can't stay in Kazakhstan and need someplace new to go. But where, oh, where could that be? Let's see, okay, relatively cheap energy, all right, wide open spaces, an overall lack of regulation and political leadership

that's purely focused on immediate growth and profits rather than what's actually good for local residents. Do we have a match for our suitor? Texas, meanwhile, has plenty of energy problems, but Bitcoin mining does not seem to be one of them. Kate Rooney is live in Rockdale, Texas, to explain. Kate, tell us what you found. I see lots and lots of servers behind you. There's lots of servers. You could probably hear the buzz of these supercomputers here in Rockdale, Texas. They're stacked about 20 feet

in the air. And I'm looking at this hallway, it's about four or five football fields long. And some in Texas are worried about what more buildings like this could mean for the Texas energy grid. It's love at first sight, folks. The stars at night may be big and bright, but they've got nothing on the Lone Star State's new data centers. Right around the same time China was banning Bitcoin mining,

you know, because it sucks up so much energy and it's bad for the environment and it didn't even do anything to make their country better. The Texas legislature passed a law streamlining crypto and blockchain investments as a way of welcoming these companies into their state. That's on top of the state's tantalizingly deregulated power grid, which allows customers to choose

between different providers and thus incentivizes low costs. Mining companies being frequent customers can often negotiate these costs down even further. Texas governor Greg Abbott feels so strongly that Texas is going to become a hub for the crypto industry. He tweeted about it three times in just a few weeks over the summer. A level of activity he typically reserves

for offering thoughts and prayers to mass shooting victims. So, you know, he's taking it seriously. In fact, some big Bitcoin mines are already operational, including a collection of warehouses about an hour northeast of Austin, which currently soaks up enough electricity to power 280,000 homes. To be fair and or balanced and or TM and or CR,

this particular mining facility actually shuts itself down during peak hours when Texans need more electricity to heat or cool their homes. And it even sells energy back to the grid as needed. But there's no law on the books that says they have to do that. Cause well, that would be regulation. You know, you can't have that.

So all of the Bitcoin miners moving to Texas now could just opt to keep mining right through crunch times, draining the state's energy grid to, well, Kazakhstan levels. And this is not just some sort of far off speculative trend. Texas is already home to 20% of Bitcoin mining.

And some estimates by the state's own grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, indicate the state's own grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, indicate the state's energy consumption could increase up to five times by 2023. Sounds, you know, real turgid again, pre-turge. But as you may recall from last year, Texas doesn't actually have the best power grid. No, as we mentioned earlier,

a massive winter storm that cut across the state last February ended up killing 246 people across 77 counties after the energy grid left millions of people without power. And now, one year later, we saw yet another winter storm stir up the same concerns. All eyes are on Texas, and that's because this latest winter blast comes almost exactly one year after another storm sparked a major power crisis across the state. Millions of Texans went without power for several days. Some even faced water, food and heat shortages. Hundreds were killed as a result of the brutal conditions, leading to widespread criticism of the state's lack of preparation for similar storms. While things look a bit better this time, Texas still didn't actually fix its energy grid.

A November assessment by the nonprofit regulatory authority, the North American Electric Reliability Corps, said the state remains susceptible to a massive energy shortfall during a severe winter storm. And ERCOT, again, the state's own energy advisory group, found that the grid probably won't be able to keep up with winter demand,

even under less severe conditions than 2021. In fact, a big problem back in February 2021, and again this year, was that natural gas pipelines and wells froze up in the cold weather and became unusable. But Governor Abbott hasn't done anything to start moving Texas away from his reliance on this infrastructure. He even appointed oil billionaire Paul Foster, one of of his key campaign donors to head ERCOT. So boy, it seems like this Abbott fellow is a real shitty idiot shit, but hold on, Abbott haters.

Ah, wah, wah. It turns out he has a solution to Texas's energy problems after all. And that solution is to have the Bitcoin miners solve it. One of the exciting things about crypto also is the ability to unlock stranded renewables. So there are a lot of places on earth where the sun shines a lot and the wind blows a lot, but there aren't any power lines. And so it's not economically feasible to use that energy.

And the beauty of Bitcoin mining is if you can connect to the internet, you can use that energy and derive value from those renewables in a way that would be impossible otherwise. And I think we're going to see in the next five to 10 years, massive innovations in that regard as well. Great points, obviously. The ESG narrative is very much in how much Bitcoin is consuming, whereas I think what Senator Cruz is saying is it's actually stabilizing the energy grid, and it allows for higher capacity, which allows for a lot more people or a lot more resilience against natural disasters. Damn it, Ted! Why do you keep showing up in my horny video?

You have the sex appeal of a dusty attic. Ted is also pushing this idea that bringing in more crypto miners will revolutionize their grid by first siphoning stranded energy, which is a real thing. Renewable energy will go to waste if all the power generated isn't being immediately used. And oil patches will have gas flares

to release pressure of excess fluids, hot. And crypto miners could use this extra energy to mine their fake internet money. Something you might notice doesn't actually solve a power grid problem. But what Abbott and Cruz are hoping is that by bringing a lot of Bitcoin miners into the state and increasing demand for energy,

then those private companies feel inspired to build new power plants there. In October, Abbott hosted a meeting at the governor's mansion, where he essentially begged crypto miners to help the state attract more power plants, asking them to get me through the winter. But notice that I use the word hoping.

That's because hoping for the best is a major plank of the plan, which does not actually come with any set guarantees about new power plants or locked in promises that Bitcoin miners will work in collaboration with the state and energy companies shutting down when demand spikes. Not to mention that since the entire point

for these miners is to find cheap energy, it's far more likely for them to simply siphon whatever sources are most available to them. They have no obligation to use clean energy specifically. It's actually just easier to find older plants and reopen them, which is exactly what happened with a natural gas power plant in New York that had ceased operation,

but was fired back up in March, 2020 for the purposes of Bitcoin mining. It now uses over 14 megawatts of power, enough for 9,000 homes or one Disneyland Main Street electrical parade. The latter at least being slightly more useful than fake internet money that uses more energy than a fucking country.

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Yeah. And... No more ads! Done with ads! And no more ads! Done with ads! God, this has been just a super sexy, sexual episode to mark this holiday. But why stop now? Let's roll the love dice, or spin the dick, or pussy the fuck, or whatever, and see where it lands. COVID testing.

Oh, yeah. Horny, horny COVID. That's, fuck, all right. Weird that we're gonna talk about this since we totally solved COVID. Specifically, President Joe Biden has cured the coronavirus by promising to send 1 billion at-home COVID tests to Americans in need, doubling the promise of 500 million tests

he made late last December. And that's pretty good in that 1 billion tests is better than 500 million tests. And 500 million tests is better than no tests at all. And in fact, a lot of you out there probably got those tests already, while others, maybe not yet. After you order them, it could take anywhere

from eight to 15 days for those tests to arrive, which isn't particularly helpful if you're worried about COVID right now. And by right now, I also mean the last couple of years. Not to mention that they're only giving four tests per household, which is super not enough, especially considering that current CDC guidelines

recommend testing five days after coming into close contact with someone who's tested positive, an occurrence that's become more and more likely since, you know. Luckily, random internet trolls are happy to tell you to just Google COVID test near me if you need to get tested sooner

than one to two weeks from now. Okay, very funny. And I'm being informed that, it was actually Joe Biden who said that. cool, great trolling Mr. President. It's funny because it underlines how bad our healthcare system is. Any other zingers? My opposition isn't to the principle

that there should be, you should have Medicare. I mean, everybody, healthcare should be right in America. My opposition relates to whether or not, A, it's doable, two, what the cost is, what the consequences for the rest of the budget are. Nah, perfect. Look, we did a whole video on how COVID exposed our shitty healthcare system that you can watch.

What I want to really highlight here is why these tests are happening so late. And it mainly comes down to the fact that all of the manufacturers in which the US is now buying these tests are happening so late. And it mainly comes down to the fact that all of the manufacturers in which the US is now buying these tests simply didn't have time to ramp up their production. Because until now, they had no way to know how many tests to make.

The test makers had to forecast demand on their own. And so considering that around this time last year, America was seeing a dip in testing, it's very likely they weren't ready for this sudden government order. After all, this is literally the first time in this years-long pandemic that the government actually decided to bulk order and ship tests to Americans. Not to mention that at this stage in the pandemic, both the U.S. and other countries are now shifting focus to vaccinations instead of tests. Britain's health secretary, for example, said last month that their free tests won't remain free indefinitely

as COVID hopefully turns endemic. And that, my sexy lovebird viewers who are totally horny right now, is what I really want to get to. That while we're over here in the States debating whether or not Biden's free tests in 2022 are too late or not enough, other countries have been offering

rapid free testing since the fucking pandemic began. To the point that everyone else is starting to wind their testing down just when we got around to starting ours. In countries like Britain, Germany, and France, rapid antigen testing has been widely available thanks to government subsidies, which is just one of the factors contributing to the glaring disparity in COVID related deaths

between the US and those other nations. In fact, in the UK, you can order packs of free tests daily. Singapore also delivers tests right to your door. While in Belgium and France, you can buy rapid tests for just a few euros, which are kind of like dollars, I think, but also a little different probably. And so this is all just really embarrassing.

You know, we're like the dirt bag roommate that only pitches in with the cleaning after most of the work has been done or like to make it romantic, we're the only person at the orgy not doing mouth stuff. And what makes it doubly frustrating is on top of our inability to plan for even the most basic aspects of this virus,

we're also hearing shit like this. The world has been shocked by the appearance of a variant that is even more transmissible than the very troublesome Delta variant. Hey, hey, just why in the hell would we be shocked by a new variant? Why are we talking about this virus as if it is only just now happening?

That was in December of 2021. The same month, Vice President Kamala Harris told the LA Times that we didn't see Delta or Omicron coming and it's like, hey, yes, we fucking did. What the fuck are you talking about? Epidemiologists have been warning us about the continued threat posed by variants for months. And we knew things would get worse in the winter.

Which part of this did you not see coming? Do you mean literally? Like since the virus is really small, we couldn't see it? Can someone clarify this for me? The vice president said in recent days that you didn't see Delta coming, you didn't see it? Can someone clarify this for me? The vice president said in recent days that you didn't see Delta coming, you didn't see Omicron coming. How did you get it wrong?

How did we get it wrong? Nobody saw it coming. Ha, there he is again, trolling us, I assume. You know, since the WHO was warning about variants in 2020, it's just really unnerving to be this far into the pandemic and hear the president say he didn't expect the mutable virus to mutate. It's like hearing your dentist say

they didn't know they couldn't spit directly in patients' mouths, or an orgy participant saying they didn't know they could spit directly in people's mouths. We're just supposed to be way past this point, much like we really should have had proper testing on year one. But Biden and Harris are just the latest

in a long line of people being somehow surprised by the effects of a years long ongoing pandemic. Everything from individuals to entire police unions appear to be blindsided by COVID three years in. It's like, did the entire country sleep in? Or is that our messaging with this virus has always been hinged on this idea that it was only going to last a little while?

It feels bad to know that scientists and experts can accurately predict what the future will be like. News outlets can report on those predictions far enough ahead of time for solutions to be implemented. Internet weirdos like me can even suggest solutions ranging from systemic healthcare fixes to just giving us more than four tests at a time. And still the people in charge can just pretend

like we didn't see this coming and there was nothing we could have done, even though, and I really can't stress this enough, we absolutely saw it coming and there definitely were a bunch of different things we could have done, even though, and I really can't stress this enough, we absolutely saw it coming, and there definitely were a bunch of different things we could have done, unlike me with Valentine's Day, which I simply could not do anything about forgetting. Also, speaking of forgetting to do things,

global warming, I mean, forgetting to stop it, that is, from happening to us as it is happening now to us currently, and we haven't stopped it, no matter how passionately Miley Cyrus sings about it. Yeah, fine, I guess we're gonna have some fun. We're gonna talk about climate change, which I figured you'd guessed by now, but maybe I can, Christ, make it sexy somehow.

I feel like I dropped the popcorn on this whole sexy angle. So maybe with this last one, I can really ramp up the hump fuel for you. You know, pick up the popcorn, cut a hole in the bottom, et cetera. Anyway, here we go. The earth is dying. Hello, my sweet, tender, juicy little news nuggets.

Nuggets are sexy, right? Here's some news from way down south. The South Pole, that is. Where things are heating up. Temperature-wise. Because of global warming. So it's getting hot. Relatively speaking, in terms of year-over-year average temperature changes.

And that's making the massive, sexy Thwaites Glacier wet. There is troubling new research about the impact that climate change is having on both of Earth's polar regions and how that could affect people all over the world. The Arctic Report card is out. High temperatures, shrinking sea ice, and extreme melting events are transforming that region. And at the opposite pole, in Antarctica, a key ice shelf that sits in front of the Thwaites Glacier could break up much sooner than expected, within five years. Mmm, yeah, you naughty, melty glacier. So you're breaking up with the ice sheet, huh?

That means you're single now, right? Oh, what's that? It means you're more likely to collapse and shed huge chunks of ice, which could raise sea levels by over 25 inches? Well, you know what else you're raising the level of? My penis. The collapse of Thwaites would add about half a meter of sea level rise and trigger a much bigger catastrophe. Because Thwaites reaches into the middle of West Antarctica,

its collapse could cause the rest of the ice sheet to collapse with it, resulting in more than three meters of sea level rise in the next few centuries. That would submerge not only Miami and Southern Bangladesh, but also parts of the Netherlands and New York City. Ness. Look, who needs Florida, New York City, Bangladesh,

the Netherlands, millions of people's homes and lives? No, no, no, no sad. Think of boners, Cody. Keep focused on the boners. Give me a sexy clip or something. Ah, yeah. Penguins having sex. Weird choice, but I am turned on by cloacas.

They call Sean Fowrey the bird man, but lately he's had a lot fewer birds to study. These local islands where we've been censusing for 43 years now have declined by about 85%. These are the birds that brought you happy feet. They don't seem so happy anymore. Damn it! Blue balled by mass penguin death, again!

But how could we possibly have known this ice melt was coming? How? I scream, dramatically, ignoring decades and decades of scientific research. Yeah, so we've actually known for a really long time, since the 1970s. In 1975 and 1979, researchers were already discussing

the possible collapse of the West. Sorry, that's an old Ben Shapiro article from Breitbart. In the 70s, researchers were already discussing the possible collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet by surges of Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers. They had correctly predicted that the Pine Island Bay Area, the location of the Thwaites Glacier, would be the quote, weak underbelly

of the West Antarctic ice sheet, a concept which opened our eyes to what we think will be the mechanism for disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet during a proposed super interglaciation triggered by CO2 induced climatic warming. Erotic stuff. So we've known about the Thwaites Glacier's Achilles heel

for almost five decades, long before we were able to send robotic drones under the ice to actually see it, which we did in 2020. I don't know about you, but that is some good doom ASMR. Most soothing climate catastrophe ever. But look, maybe these predictions won't happen, you know? And the Thwaites Glacier will just be fine and chill. Even though all the evidence is indicating

it definitely will break off at our current pace of global warming. I mean, scientists make mistakes, right? I mean, except for the fact that the whole point of science is to test hypotheses through a rigorous process, which means that when scientists predict things, they often do come true, but sometimes maybe they won't, except they usually do,

like how back in 2016, scientists warned that there was a crack in an Antarctic ice shelf and a trillion ton iceberg named A68, so close, was about to break free. And in 2017, it did break free. So yay, science. And then in 2021, it was break free. So yay, science. And then in 2021, it was confirmed

to have completely broken up and melted, dumping a huge amount of fresh water into the delicate saltwater ecosystem near the South Georgia islands of the Atlantic, which may impact the population of local sea life. So this is a climate disaster, scientists predicted would happen and then it happened. And don't you know, this is the case

with many other climate disasters that are not just hypothetical, but rather are currently happening now. In 2019 and 2020, the number of natural disasters was 75% higher than the previous 20 years, according to UN's Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, or UNDER, as in we're gonna be UNDER water soon, get it? Because the earth is dying.

Anyway, researchers have been warning of an increase in natural disasters since the 90s and have been continually publishing new research warning of these events. And have we done anything in response to all of these warnings? I mean, first of all, ask these penguins. Well, you can't because they all died after an iceberg

the size of Rome crashed into their bay and trapped them there. But you know, conduct a penguin seance and ask the tortured souls of all those dead penguins. And they'll probably say, no, no, we haven't really done much in response to all the warnings. Boy, sorry, this stopped getting sexy real fast. I mean, unless you have a really specific

and disturbing kink. We do. Gross. So you can't ask those penguins, but you can ask the Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, which reported in 2019 a global under-preparedness for the increase of natural disasters, saying,

current risk management institutions and approaches are appropriate for handling individual hazards, but are not fit for handling systemic risk on the scale indicated by the steep rise in climate-related disaster events. They cited the underwhelming response to the current COVID crisis as an example of warning going unheeded saying,

"'At the same time, almost all nations fail "'to prepare appropriately to prevent the wave of death "'and illness unleashed across the globe "'by the COVID-19 pandemic, despite many urgings to do so "'from a plethora of experts, including WHO, "'Under and others. "'It is baffling that we willingly and knowingly continue to sow the seeds of our own destruction,

despite the science and evidence that we are turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell for millions of people. Boy, I think maybe, maybe, maybe, when a professor at the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters and the representative of the head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction describe our future world as an uninhabitable hell for millions of people, on the epidemiology of disasters and the representative of the head of the UN office for disaster risk reduction

describe our future world as an uninhabitable hell for millions of people, that's kind of bad. And again, I want to emphasize it is avoidable. While we may not be able to completely prevent climate change since it's already happening and stop all the climate disasters from happening since they're already happening,

not only can we change course on global warming by reducing emissions, we can also prepare ourselves better for disasters we can't prevent. For example, Bangladesh and India saved the lives of tens of thousands from dying during a super cyclone. In May and June of 2020, India and Bangladesh were hit by two massive cyclones, Cyclone Amphan, the strongest storm ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal, and Cyclone

Nisarga. These cyclones are becoming more powerful due to climate change, scientists warn, as they have been warning since the 70s. India had already been hit by a super cyclone in 1999, which killed 10,000 people in Odisha. In response,

India implemented a new disaster preparedness organization called the National Disaster Response Force. Due to mass evacuation and preparedness efforts, the program seems to have paid off. The Amphan cyclone killed around 100 people and the Disargus cyclone killed six people. Obviously it's not good news since people still died,

but fewer people died than in the past. And hey, I feel like fewer human deaths is something to feel good about. Kinda, maybe. Serotonin, go! Just gotta squeeze that serotonin out. Oh, I peed a little bit. No, I peed a lot.

And a little bit of hope, you know, and some pee. Hope and pee, a lot. And a little bit of hope, you know, and some pee. Hope and pee, a lot of pee, little bit of hope. And now that I've used up the rest of my piss hope rations for the day, let's talk for a moment about how fucked the US is. USA, USA, US effed in the A. Now, I want to preface this by saying the people who will most disproportionately suffer

due to climate change is the global South. That is the poorer nations that richer nations exploit and who bear the least responsibility for global warming. But that doesn't mean people in the US won't suffer. Huzzah! Especially ethnic minorities and underserved communities who the EPA reports are most likely to bear the brunt of climate disasters.

But in general, Americans are more vulnerable to climate change than you might expect. First of all, the majority of the US population is concentrated along the coasts, the areas most prone to hurricanes and flooding. Disasters can also compound. Drought and extreme heat leads to wildfires, which leads to air pollution,

and this can be happening in the West while simultaneously tornadoes hit the Midwest and hurricane winds and flooding hit the East Coast. Compound disasters are more likely as extreme weather events increasingly become the norm due to global warming. Having multiple disasters at once can shock our infrastructure and make it more difficult

for the government to respond, which it already does an extremely shitty job during a disaster, like say, like a pandemic. Like we talked about earlier in the episode, along with infrastructure problems and shitty power grids. Like we talked about earlier in the episode. It all ties together, doesn't it? Wow, it's just layers and layers of interweaving shit. Like some kind of awful tiramisu.

Tiramiscat, disgusting. But maybe I worry too much. You know, maybe climate is just like stocks. Like how former professor and bedroom sanitation expert, Jordan B. Peterson puts it, that climate models can predict the past, just like models of the stock market. I defy these modelers to predict one stock accurately

for one year and to bet their own money on the outcome. First of all, great point from the doctor about how climate scientists can't accurately predict a stock for a year, incredible mind. But the funny thing about questioning the climate models, being able to predict the future, is that the climate models aren't predicting the future because climate change is happening now.

Climate models from the past are accurately predicting what is happening right now. Today, the Thwaites Collapse that was predicted since the 1970s is happening now. The increase in natural disasters predicted in the 90s is happening now. None of this is speculative now. The increase in natural disasters predicted in the 90s is happening now. None of this is speculative anymore. These are predictions that already came true

from scientists who have been frighteningly accurate. And yet bowtie wearing armchair skeptics are still pretending, whoa, whoa, what, what, what, what? If it doesn't happen though, is still a relevant argument. Hard to sort out. The climate change one is a weird one.

So that one. Well, that's because there's no such thing as climate, right? Climate and everything are the same word. And that's what bothers me about the climate change types. It is essential to our survival that we begin to ignore these dipshits. They are dead weight. And this type of thinking resonates with everything we have discussed here

on this erotic episode, which is that like COVID, which is like our crumbling infrastructure, which is like our shitty power grids, climate change is a right now problem that some people are still treating like an abstract far away concept. And as a result, we're just beyond unprepared.

Seems like there's a lesson to be learned here and fast please. Like if America was a character in a movie who kept missing an important holiday or something like that, this would be our rock bottom third act moment where they finally get their lives together and prove at the last second that they can grow

and actually follow up on their promises. Not me, obviously, I'm doing great. I totally nailed this episode despite having nothing planned. Can you believe this was all improvised at the last minute? That's how good I am nailing this episode and gonna nail this Valentine's Day too. Fucking, fucking King Cody got all my ducks in a row. That should be the ducks now!

Time for one fucktastic Valentine's Day. I need you to know that I will not, obviously, be fucking these birds. I'm not. I'm not gonna fuck the birds. I'm not. Oh, it's over. This is the end of the episode. Thank you so much for watching.

Do the YouTube stuff, like, subscribe, comment nicely and check out our patreon.com slash some more news. We've got a merch store with Wormbo on it. And we've got a podcast called Even More News and this show, some more news as a podcast. If you, if you don't like my face, which is fine. Do what you want. The birds like my face.

I mean, the, the, the, the, the, the, nothing about the birds. Do what you want. The birds like my face. I mean, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, nothing about the birds.