The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 9.4 NEW Apalachee High School Shooting in Georgia Details, 14-Year-Old Shooter Identified, & Todays News

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

A lot of updates came in right as I was finishing which is why today's show was out a little later... Visit  https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/DEFRANCO and use code DEFRANCO and get $50 instantly when you play $5 Get up to 50% OFF @ https://BeautifulBastard.com today! Get your new favorite comfy tee, hoodie, & more 62 Days Until Election Day! Make Sure You Are Registered to VOTE: https://Vote.org  – ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩ – 00:00 - HOA Are Taking Your $$$ But Can’t Actually Afford Fixes 04:33 - Sony Shuts Down Concord Video Game Two Weeks After Release 09:35 - Sponsored by Prize Picks 10:47 - Jenna Ortega Highlights Issues With Roles For Women in Hollywood 13:45 - Nvidia Sheds $279 Billion in Value in a Single Day 15:47 - As Protestors Blocked Mexico’s Congress, Lawmakers Passed Judicial Overhaul   19:47 - 4 Dead After Tragedy at Apalachee High School in Georgia ——————————   Produced by: Cory Ray Edited by: James Girardier Art Department: William Crespo Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Brian Espinoza, Lili Stenn, Maddie Crichton, Chris Tolve, Star Pralle, Jared Paolino ———————————— #DeFranco #Georgia #JennaOrtega ———————————— Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sup you beautiful bastards. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show, your daily dive into the news. I hope you're having a fantastic Wednesday. You know, there's a lot that we gotta talk about today. So let's just jump into it. To start the dive into this very important topic, I'm gonna have to say two words

that are gonna trigger some of you. Homeowners Association. For a great number of Americans, one of the most frustrating topics. I mean, it is a topic that could easily fill a 10 hour video of just horror story after horror story. There's so many stories out there in the world of petty tyrants with too much time on their hands,

just ruining people's lives, to families facing the possibility of being excluded from their home because the community all of a sudden decided to become 55 plus. But what we're actually gonna be diving into is what may be an impending infrastructure crisis across America.

Because as it turns out, HOAs are often not setting aside enough money for the maintenance that they're required to do. This might come as a shock to a lot of people, but it is often the case that a lot of the infrastructure within an HOA's community is supposed to be maintained by them. And I don't mean the community items like pools and parks,

but even basic stuff like roads and water treatment centers built exclusively for the HOA. Now this wasn't always the case, and instead directly coincides with the meteoric rise in the number of HOAs plaguing this country over the past decade or so. Because in 2011, just 11% of new homes were under HOAs. But by 2022, it jumped to 66%, with developers often making deals with cities that the HOAs governing their new developments would handle the infrastructure in order to smooth over the approval process for getting new homes built. And this is where the trouble really starts. We're getting to a point

where many of these communities are needing regular maintenance on things like their roads, and suddenly they're finding, oh shit, we don't have cash for it. Like for example, the situation in West Virginia that Edward Erford, Director of Community Action at Strong Towns, talked about this year. You know, that town was collecting fees from homeowners for the normal things, community upkeep, pool maintenance, and as far as everyone knew, money for regular maintenance. And after a few years, it was clear that the roads needed to community upkeep, pool maintenance, and as far as everyone knew, money for regular maintenance. And after a few years, it was clear that the roads needed to be worked on,

only then for everyone to find out, oh, it's gonna cost $3 million to repave them. But the HOA, they only had a hundred grand on hand. Now in this situation, they could have levied a special assessment fee, which is essentially just telling everyone, surprise, you need to pay the difference. But the homeowners were actually lucky here

because the city decided to handle it rather than deal with the political ramifications of angry voters. But in other instances, things can become far more messy, such as when an HOA is disbanded by a court order for failing to meet its obligations, as one poor homeowner in Texas found out, writing, my neighborhood was part of an HOA

that was court ordered to dissolve years ago, but at that time, the county never took over the maintenance of the roads. In the years following, the roads have obviously completely turned into disrepair. This is leaving the neighborhood without adequate 911 services, utilities are constantly getting stuck

or unable to perform their duties, et cetera. And stories like that, they're not uncommon, especially as cities don't wanna take over the HOA's responsibility, since that was the whole point of allowing it in the first place, especially if the roads are already screwed up, but then also why does this happen so often?

And I mean, one reason is that when HOAs are first set up, the developers themselves are on the board and often in control. And in order to entice would-be buyers, they keep HOA fees low, despite the fact that it would never be enough to actually cover key maintenance costs. And when eventually they no longer have properties to sell there and the HOAs are run by actual residents, few realize the financial pitfall that they're in or that this will even be a problem. It's the sense of being a classic problem of, you should have read the fine text. It's the sense of being a classic problem of, you should have read the fine text. Though also, pro tip, when buying a home,

read literally every detail and know the HOA's rules inside and out before you buy. Then even in these situations, if a homeowner realizes there might be a problem, what can they do? Well, unfortunately, not much. Generally speaking, you can demand for the financial reports from the association

to see how the money is being spent. And then you could try to get the homeowners association board to raise fees to cover the costs if it's clear that there's not enough money in the bank for maintenance. So that obviously sucks for you because now you're paying more than you thought you'd have to. And even that is assuming the board didn't just ignore your request to look at statements. And in cases like that, or if there's clearly a financial wrongdoing, residents will likely need to go to court. And from there, a bunch can happen. I mean, up to and including the board and HOA being dissolved entirely, albeit that being rare.

But even there, you know, that doesn't solve the problem, right? I mean, we saw the situation in Texas where the city wasn't just gonna pick up the tab for the roads. And a lot of the financial ignorance, that can happen in even otherwise well-run HOAs that have sensible rules and enforcement

that help homeowners maximize value, which is why Erfurt, who's generally pro-HOA, wants cities to pick up the tab. Although to be fair to him, he thinks the issue stems from before the HOA is even made. This is all a cascading problem stemming from cities making agreements with developers to shift the responsibility of running parts of the city to local homeowners.

And in return, they get to have a larger tax base without the responsibility that normally comes with them. But at the same time, you could also argue this the other way around. Or with people saying the developers actually trick cities with promises that they knew wouldn't realistically be on. Which is why with this, I'll ask you what you think. And I don't mean about HOAs in general, though. Feel free to share. I love a horror story or three. But specifically, you know,

who do you think should ultimately be on the hook for things like these roads when things go belly up? And then if you're not super involved in the gaming world, you might not have heard about the unmitigated catastrophe that is Concord. This game is almost definitely the biggest flop in gaming history. So Concord's an online is almost definitely the biggest flop in gaming history. Resi Concord's an online team-based first-person shooter developed by Firewalk Studios, which was acquired by Sony last year.

The game actually launched on August 23rd, but like pretty much every side project I ever announced, they then promptly unlaunched it, with Sony announcing that the game will be taken completely offline this Friday, September 6th, and explaining, "'While many qualities of the experience "'resonated with players, "' and explaining, while many qualities of the experience resonated with players,

we also recognize that other aspects of the game in our initial launch didn't land the way we'd intended. While we determine the best path ahead, Concord sales will cease immediately, and we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased the game for PS5 or PC. Also, to explain, when they say that it didn't land the way they intended,

they mean that the game sold just 25,000 copies across both platforms. Right, in financial terms, that means about $1 million in revenue. And Steam charts show that the game peaked at just under 700 concurrent players just after launch. Which in case you don't understand just how horrible that is.

One, even Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League, which was also a notorious flop, still managed to get 13,000 concurrent players. Two, the under 700 number we're talking about were peak numbers. Like if you look right now, they only have 40 or 50 people concurrently playing Concord. And three, a AAA title as ambitious as Concord

should have reached a player count in the hundreds of thousands, if not past a million. Right, not only did this game cost likely tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars to make, it took six to eight years. It was a brand new IP that was supposed to grow into a staple franchise with its own ever expanding universe and cast of characters.

I mean, just a week before launch, you had the game director hyping up major content drops planned for October and January. I mean, Concord was even supposed to get its own episode on Amazon's upcoming anthology series called Secret Level, where each entry is based on a different video game IP. So also there, it's unclear if they're going to scrap that episode before its December release date, because now it's based on a game that practically doesn't exist. And so, you know, obviously with

this, the flop came as a shock to the game developers, but even people who expected this game to flop didn't realize it would flop this hard. I am beyond surprised because I thought they'd at least ride this as much as they could, like trying to update the game, like desperately trying to get some players to buy into it. Like I thought this would go at least six months, like a full season or something of the game, but it didn't even make it like a full two weeks. I've never seen a live service, triple A live service published by such a high profile publisher die this fast. Right, and so all of this, it raises the question of, well, what the fuck happened?

Right, because if you looked at just the critics reviews, you wouldn't have expected it to perform so poorly. I mean, they weren't great, they weren't even good, but they weren't completely awful. You know, on Metacritic, it had a 62 out of a hundred, with a general consensus being that although the gameplay was fine, it just didn't bring anything new or interesting

to the table that you couldn't already find in Overwatch, Valorant, or Destiny 2, with some saying IGN maybe put it best. Grab a copy of Overwatch off some dusty GameStop shelf and rub it under the musky armpit of the Guardians of the Galaxy's Peter Quill, and you might have something close to the feeling of Concord. But then if you look at the user ratings, the game score plummets to an embarrassing 1.8 out of 10, with some just absolutely shitting all over Concord's petrified face. Because it was a $40 game that was a watered down

worse version of all of its free counterparts that it was trying to suckle from the teats of. It was a generic slop hero shooter with character design that probably rivaled that of my actual doodles in kindergarten. But now also with this, if you venture over into the more political side of reactions, you have some people claiming Concord was an example of go woke, go broke,

with a number of people pointing to the game's inclusion of pronouns and multicultural characters. But really, most people seem to agree that it was just the wrong game at the wrong time with mediocre content. Like you can't look at a game like Deadlock that has tons of representation, and you can't look at a game like Overwatch

that's somehow more woke than Concord ever could hope to be. And then be like, the reason why Concord failed is because it was woke. You know, with all that said, really the only question left is, will Sony try to salvage this game at all? Or are they gonna just try to move on and forget about this? Because some have taken the company's promise

to quote, explore options, including those that will better reach our players as maybe a hint that it could make Concord free to play." And there you even have outlets like Forbes saying, "'Sony should do that even without "'a monetization plan in place.'" Writing, "'No, the game is not remotely designed "'for a flip to free to play,

"'given that the whole point was a bunch of free earned stuff "'in exchange for the $40 price point, "'but right now that doesn't matter. "'It needs players fast.'" Though this, standing in the face of others that think, there's no way to salvage this. Free to play will not save the game. People just don't want anything that the game has to offer.

The game doesn't really look like it plays well. The characters look stupid. I think high triple digit amount of people are going to be absolutely removed because of this. But for now, we'll have to wait to see how this plays out. And so if you're of the few several thousand that got the game, I'd love to know your thoughts. But also, I'd love to hear from you if you avoided this game. What was the reason why?

I'd love to hear from you because, I mean, this game wasn't even remotely on my radar. And then, y'all, it is finally football season, which also means for me it is fantasy football season. And I wanted to remind you that there's always action on today's sponsor, PrizePix, the fantasy sports app that allows you to run your game all season long. Because PrizePix is the skill-based fantasy game where it's just you against the numbers. And if you sign up today, you get $50 instantly when you play $5. You don't even need to win to receive the $50 bonus. It's guaranteed. And one Caleb Williams passing yard gets you one win on PrizePix every week in

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Right, because she's been popping up in headlines because she's doing tons of interviews for the new Beetlejuice film. And yesterday she was asked what she would do if she was approached to do an Edward Scissorhands reboot as Edith Scissorhands. Right, essentially a female led version of the movie or a reboot a la the woman led Ghostbusters or Ocean's 8.

And to that question, you had Jenna say it. No, you know what I would say about that specifically as well? I love that there's a lot more female leads nowadays. I think that's so special, but we should have our own. I don't like it when it's like a spinoff. Like I don't wanna see like Jamie Bond, you know? Like I want to see just like another badass.

And with that, well, I'm not gonna go out of my way to hate on a gender bender reboot. I 100% agree. Give me more Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman. Give me Sigourney Weaver in Alien. Give me Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. Give me Samara Weaving in Ready or Not. Also, yes, right in this moment,

I'm realizing I have an affinity for violent wronged women. And again, I wanna reiterate, like I'm not completely against the idea of re-imagining a character as a different gender. I think Starbuck is a fantastic example of that. But main thing, yeah, Ortega's words here, it resulted in a lot of headlines and it comes as roles for women in Hollywood

have been a hot topic. There's always the conversation happening of representation and diversity, what's the industry doing? And you see that there's tons of initiatives to make strides there, but also a report from August highlighted just how little the needle has actually moved there.

Because even last year, which was the year of Barbie, women on screen saw some setbacks. For example, USC Annenberg's inclusion initiative finding that of the 100 top grossing films of 2023, only 30% had women in leading roles, which is a 14% drop from 2022. Also on top of that, only 32% of speaking characters in movies last year were girls or women,

and only 11% were gender balanced, meaning that there was a roughly even split of speaking roles between men and women. So with that, you had the author of the report, Professor Stacey L. Smith, saying in a statement, no matter how you examine the data, 2023 was not the year of the woman. We continue to report the same trends

for girls and women on screen year in and year out. It is clear there is either a dismissal of women as an audience for more than one or two films per year, a refusal to find ways to create meaningful change, or both. And saying if the industry wants to survive its current moment, it must examine its failure to employ half the population on screen. With a different report also finding a similar pattern in television as well. With one of the authors noting that the percentage of women working as creators last year was barely higher than it was in the late 90s. But then, you know, to bring it back to what Jenna Ortega was saying, I think that it is,

yes, a connected situation, but it's also very different. There is an audience that will love and watch a female-led movie. It's just that a lot of people want new roles for women rather than kind of sloppy, gender-bent spinoffs. So that's not to say I have all the answers, right? I think Furiosa was a fucking fantastic movie. But obviously, that is a recent example of what's been considered a box office bomb. Though there, I would go on to say that has nothing to do with Anya Taylor-Joy who fucking crushed that role. Because I think that more had to do with it being

a nine year separated prequel spinoff where the initial female lead was understandably swapped out because it's supposed to be a younger version. And it was a prequel to a film that I think brought in $380 million globally. But anyway, I'm nerding out too much and now I'm fucking defending a movie that wasn't even mentioned in the initial story.

So I'll just end this by asking, you know, what are your thoughts around what Jenna Ortega said in the general situation? And then in business and finance news, let's talk about Nvidia, right? Because when AI really started picking up steam, semiconductor giant Nvidia was reaping the rewards. With their chips being proven essential

for artificial intelligence tools, and as the AI space grew, Nvidia's valuation skyrocketed. I mean, it even hit the $2 trillion mark earlier this year, making it one of the most valuable US companies behind only Microsoft and Apple. But now in the last few days, they've taken some serious hits.

I mean, last week, the company's quarterly forecast failed to meet the lofty expectations of their investors. We saw their shares reportedly dipping by 6% and after hours trading last Wednesday, a dip that also weighed on shares of other chip makers as well. With us then seeing yesterday a sell-off across Wall Street, thanks to rekindled fears about the health of the economy as well

as new concerns surrounding AI. And again, many companies took a hit, but the most notable was Nvidia's, whose shares saw a drop of more than 9% in regular trading. Meaning the company shed nearly $279 billion in value, making it the biggest single day loss by any US company in history. With the previous record holder having been meta

for their $232 billion loss in value in one day during February of 2022. But for NVIDIA, that wasn't the end of their troubles because their shares ended up slipping even further in post-market trading yesterday following the publication of an article by Bloomberg. With that, reporting that the U.S. Justice Department sent the company subpoenas as part of an antitrust investigation. And there you had the article citing anonymous sources and saying, antitrust officials are concerned that NVIDIA is making it harder to switch to other suppliers and penalizes buyers that don't exclusively use its artificial intelligence chips. Now, notably, this is not a formal complaint from the DOJ as of yet, but the subpoenas take this probe one step closer. So,

you know, we're going to have to keep our eyes on this. I also think that it's important to say, right, this massive sell-off we've seen, it's not like NVIDIA is going to be shuttering its doors. The building's not on fire? They're not selling desks, right? Because when you pull back and you look at the fuller picture, all this is happening after their stock is still more than double just this year alone.

And the mean analyst estimate for their annual net income through January is around 70 billion. And again, it wasn't just NVIDIA taking the hit. The whole chip index was down by like 7.5%, which is why for now, who really knows what's gonna happen? We're gonna have to wait to see both,

I mean, as far as the stock price and the DOJ investigation. And then in huge international news, we gotta talk about this controversy playing out in Mexico right now, because we are seeing massive protests playing out after Mexico's lower house of Congress passed this controversial plan to massively overhaul the country's judicial system.

And these protests have been taking place against the plan for weeks now with thousands of federal court workers and even judges going on strike to oppose it. And actually one, yesterday we saw a huge protest in front of the congressional building to block lawmakers from entering. And two, on top of that,

the country's Supreme Court justices joined the strike as well. But also, even in the face of all that, lawmakers were completely unfazed. Because while the protesters kept them from physically getting inside of Congress, they just gathered in a sweltering gymnasium about three miles away to begin the voting process.

With the men, after more than 12 hours of debate, passing the measure, which is a constitutional reform requiring a two-thirds majority, with 359 votes in favor and 135 votes against. While technically this is gonna be moving to the Senate for further debate, it is really all but expected to be approved without a problem. Because like in the lower house,

outgoing President AMLO's party and his allies, they dominate the entire Congress. And in fact, notably with this, he is still incredibly popular across the country. And you actually had tens of thousands cheering him on as he talked about his judicial reform plan in a speech on Sunday. But the big concern here is that he's using this popularity

to cement his party's hold on power well into the future. And we touched on some of this last week when we talked about how one controversial part of the plan involves introducing masked judges to preside over organized crime cases, with the idea there being that hiding their identities would prevent reprisals. While there is obviously a whole debate

to be had with just that, I mean, this is about way more than that, where the even bigger thing is that the plan calls for the election by popular vote of more than 7,000 judges and magistrates, including the Supreme Court. Whereas under the current system, judges and court secretaries slowly qualify

for higher positions based on their record. But here, under the proposed changes, pretty much anyone with a law degree and a few years experience could become a judge. And in fact, if too many candidates sign up to run for a judgeship, the final candidates would basically be chosen by putting their names in a hat and holding a drawing.

Also another controversial part of the plan is the creation of a disciplinary tribunal that would sanction judges if they're deemed to be remiss putting their names in a hat and holding a drawing. Also another controversial part of the plan is the creation of a disciplinary tribunal that would sanction judges if they're deemed to be remiss in their duties. And notably there, you had a researcher at Mexico's Center for Constitutional Studies saying, "'The criteria for what that means is super vague. The whole thing makes it so judges won't deliberate

based on laws in the Constitution, but on party affiliation or fear of fines.'" And then on top of all that, the courts would be largely stripped of their power to block government projects or laws based on appeals by citizens. And then finally, along with the judicial reform, Congress is also considering giving greater power to the military and eliminating watchdogs like the agency handling freedom of information requests. You know, with

all this, AMLO, for his part, has argued that the changes are needed to hold judges accountable and reduce corruption. And you know, there, it is true that Mexico's courts have long had problems with corruption and transparency. But also notably, in the last 15 years, they've become more open and accountable by getting rid of many closed door paper-based trials. And while of course there are still many issues, it's also worth noting that AMLO himself has faced allegations of corruption and all this,

while many have argued that he's already done real damage to Mexican democracy. And specifically there, that has a lot to do with his history of attacking the judicial system. Right, I mean, he's claimed judges are part of a mafia against him. And he's also ignored court orders and publicly argued with judges whose rulings he disagreed with. And so with all that, you have critics saying this judicial reform would concentrate power in the presidency, erode the independence of the courts, and of course, open it to influence by those who provide cash to fund judicial campaigns. And a key takeaway is that among those who have spoken out against the plan is the US ambassador to Mexico, who said that quote, the popular direct election of judges

is a major risk to the functioning of Mexico's democracy, which is actually something that led to AMLO putting relations with the US embassy on pause and calling the comments disrespectful of Mexico's national sovereignty. And all of that being just the latest example of the growing tensions between Mexico and the US. I mean, back in July, for example,

AMLO was upset by what's been described as an extraterritorial operation to arrest a major drug lord, with one Mexico-based political analyst saying, "'In other circumstances, in another context, "'he might have just listened, not escalated a conflict. "'In the past months, we've seen a lot more radical "'statements towards the United States.'"

And while with all this, of course, AMLO is on his way out, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo will be sworn in on October 1st, and she has consistently backed AMLO. And that includes this overhaul of the judicial system. So really no one's expecting anything different to play out there. But then shifting gears to our final story today is just this horrible news coming out of Georgia.

Because reportedly a shooter opened fire at Appalachee High School in Georgia, about 50 miles outside of Atlanta. And according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, four are dead and nine others are injured. The Bureau also adding that they've taken the suspect into custody alive despite some earlier reports that the shooter had been killed on scene. Also as far as more details there was actually a press briefing that happened just as I was finishing up today's show. Law enforcement

naming the shooter and identifying them as a 14 year old student who will be charged and handled as an adult. Also regarding the four people who were killed, two were students and two were teachers. Also as far as how the shooter was taken in they gave a brief timeline. Saying at 10.20 a.m. they received alerts about reports of an active shooter. Saying within minutes police were on the scene and two school resource officers were already there and they immediately encountered the shooter.

At which time they say the shooter immediately surrendered. Now that said, more information's still likely to come and some outlets have already reported on what was going down inside the school during and after the shooting. You had a coroner describing to the Washington Post how they had to go from classroom to classroom to look for bodies.

Reports also saying the priority on the ground was releasing students back to their families. Also schools in the surrounding area were placed on a soft lockdown, but they were later set to release their students. Some students have also spoken to news outlets about what happened with one telling ABC. Then Ausmus came on and that's when they were like,

they were like, it's a hard lockdown, intruder drill. And then we were all like, like kids started crying, kids started freaking out, like everybody was just there. Like this is all sad because like people, like I know my sister knows like one of the kids that got shot and it's like, we all know these people and like, this is like a community. You know, with this, you have a lot of people speaking out.

You had Governor Brian Kemp saying he directed all available state resources to Appalachian High, as well as urging everyone to pray for the safety of those in our classrooms. You also had Representative Mike Collins, whose district includes the area the high school is in, saying he is praying for the students and their families. But there's also, as he's now facing a ton of backlash,

as back in 2022, he posted a video of himself holding a gun while accusing the Democrats of stealing the presidential election and claiming Trump won Georgia, and then telling Biden to overhaul voting systems before doing this. holding a gun while accusing the Democrats of stealing the presidential election and claiming Trump won Georgia, and then telling Biden to overhaul voting systems before doing this. Well, if they won't do it, Mike Collins will.

Send me to Washington. I'll fix this election. And so with that clip now going viral in the wake of the shooting, you have people saying things like, I'm sure this douchebag will make some bullshit speech about thoughts and prayers, but it's obvious he doesn't give a fuck about gun control. As well as fuck this asshole, blood is on his hands. Right, and as we often see in the aftermath of these horrible things that

consistently happen here, gun reform's already a major topic right now as a result. But for now, especially with this being a developing situation, we'll be looking out for updates and talking about them when we get them. And that, unfortunately, is where our Wednesday evening, Thursday morning show is going to end. And I'll just leave you by saying I love your faces. Be safe. Tell those in your life you love them because you never know what's going to happen. And I'll see you tomorrow.