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Greetings lovely people,

Well, it’s not coming home in the end, as England bowed out of the World Cup to their old rivals West Falklands Argentina.

Alas, we’ll all be getting hammered anyway as we watch France demolish England in the completely pointless third-place play-off match tomorrow.

Anyway, enough sporting nonsense.

Let’s get you up to speed on the news that really matters, via memes.

⏰ Today's reading time is 6 minutes

Securing the support of 349 of the party’s MPs, Andy Burnham has been confirmed as the new Labour leader, and he’s a man with a plan, apparently.

The news comes hot on the heels of current PM Sir Keir Starmer’s announced farewell from No. 10, a move described as “pleasing absolutely everyone.” 

In contrast to his predecessor, Andy’s popularity has been put down to his radical non-void of charisma, and adherence to “Manchesterism” – an ideology described as a combination of soft-left economic policy, localism, and never, ever, ever, under any circumstances, shutting the fuck up about the Stone Roses.

Burnham’s rise to power has not gone uncriticised however, as seasoned journalists and some MPs have suggested that the presumptive PM is deliberately avoiding press scrutiny. 

Indeed, nothing says “I have a plan” quite like making more references to football than specific policies during your first speech as party leader. 

When reached out for comment on his campaign victory, the PM-hopeful emerged from under his bed with this to say:

“Ohhh uhh chippy tea, wiv yer tea, wiv yer Corrie, not wiv a Tory, no usin’ an umbrella, no trickle-down economics and- uhhh- every town in the country.”

Let’s see how that all goes down with the notoriously patient and empathetic British electorate come November/December time.

Chat Control 1.0, a ‘temporary’ derogation from ePrivacy rules designed to detect online child sexual abuse, was adopted by the European Parliament on Thursday.

A loophole in parliamentary procedure allowed MEPs to extend mass scanning of private communications until 2026, without actually having a direct vote on the substance of the law.

The whole thing wasn’t helped by the fact that a large chunk of the lawmakers who could have blocked it are on holiday.

That’s not another ‘Europeans are all lazy bastards’ trope. They actually are on holiday.

Labelled a "legislative zombie" by MEPs due to repeated defeats, a clear sign of its popularity, the proposal originated as a temporary 2021 measure to detect child sexual abuse material.

This would enable companies to monitor private communications with legal EU backing.

Critics warn the regulation suspends EU privacy laws to allow platforms to "mass-scan" users' private messages, all under the guise of protecting children against an army of digitally native paedophiles.

The legislation excludes messages sent with end to end encryption i.e. Whatsapp, Telegram, etc.

Oh, and Ursula Von der Lesbian hair Leyen’s texts. Don’t ask about those. We don’t want to get in trouble.

Brussels fatcats are already negotiating a sequel, Chat Control 2.0.

This one would extend requirements to end to end encryption, raising further privacy concerns beyond the current voluntary framework's scope.

It could be time to start communicating via fax and/or carrier pigeon.

New York will block the construction of any new large data centres for up to a year, so the state can create rules to protect the environment and energy grid from the power-hungry facilities that fuel artificial intelligence technology.

Governor Kathy Hochul is set to sign an executive order Tuesday morning imposing the country’s first statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers, which house thousands of computer servers and require massive amounts of energy and a steady supply of water to keep cool.

Still less than most golf courses though.

The decision in New York also carries political significance for Hochul’s re-election campaign and the state’s tight congressional races this fall, as Democrats move to address affordability concerns over high utility bills and other pocketbook issues.

Tech companies (shocker) and Hochul’s Republican counterpart in the upcoming election have argued moves to block the construction of data centers hurt job growth for local communities and cede ground to China in a race to lead in the rapidly growing AI industry.

Hmmmm, which out of “I want to lower your bills” and “Do you really want to cede strategic ground to China in the AI race?!” will resonate more with everyday voters?

If she’s struggling for votes, Hochul can always go back to talking about how black kids don’t know what a computer is.

Blah, blah, blah, not financial advice.

Don’t spunk your life savings all on a shitcoin or SpaceX or similar such nonsense.

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Despite it being the final week of his premiership, the British public was blessed with one final Big Brother-esque policy from Keir Stalin before he leaves Downing Street for good. 

Having already banned under-16s from social media, measures will come into force in 2027 which will limit older teenagers’ social media use. 

Proposed changes include making social media sites unavailable for 16- and 17-year-olds between midnight and 6am, and banning addictive features like infinite scrolling and autoplay on videos. 

Platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, and X will be affected, but Bluesky will also be caught by the ban. This is, of course, terrible news for all of the teenage centrist dads/Rory Stewart fanboys on Bluesky. All 6 of them.

Some have highlighted issues with the proposals, as existing loopholes (like the existence of VPNs) won’t be closed.

16- and 17-year-olds will also have the ability to opt out of the curfew, which makes the measure about as effective as a condom that’s just been put through a meat grinder.

It’s arguable that older teenagers should also have some guardrails online, but it’s also arguable that over-65s need a curfew more than 16- and 17-year-olds.

For the sake of our democracy, someone needs to stop them getting their “news” from AI slop in Facebook groups.

In yet another spectacular misuse of public money that only Dementia Donald could pull off, the White House announced this week that it has made $3m of public funding available for MAGA-aligned groups in Europe. 

The initiative will offer grants to European charities, think tanks and individuals seeking to “address… challenges in line with shared political philosophy, law and our common western civilizational heritage”. 

Political parties taking foreign donations is illegal in Germany and the UK, for example.

However, concerns have already been raised that this is an attempt to indirectly influence elections in Europe by financially supporting individuals and other organisations sympathetic to Trump on issues like free speech and mass migration and taking backhanders from Russia. 

On the plus side, we know that the US loves to meddle in other countries’ politics, so at least we’re not getting the Latin America treatment yet (spare a thought for the likes of Panama, Guatemala and Chile). 

However, the scheme is still raising eyebrows due to its brazenness and obviously political motives. 

We’re holding out hope that it’s an elaborate entrapment scheme for Nazi sympathisers and paedophiles.

Probably not though given who Trump’s mates are, although it might be an opportunity for Nigel Farage to practise declaring “personal gifts” should he receive any money as part of the scheme.

The use of Chinese large language models like DeepSeek and Z.ai has overtaken US-made models this year, with Chinese models enjoying a 45% market share of all token use in July 2026. 

For context, US frontier models like Claude and ChatGPT process around 35% of total token usage (albeit with much higher revenues).

Chinese models overtook US models around mid-February this year. However, a key development is that large western companies like Siemens, Airbnb and DoorDash have started to use Chinese models for significant portions of their work, reserving frontier model use for only the most complex tasks. 

After seeing the madness of tokenmaxxing earlier this year (looking at you, Meta employee who burned 281 million tokens in a month) and given that a GPT 5.5 token is 35x more expensive than the DeepSeek equivalent, cost saving is clearly driving the shift. 

However, leading Chinese models are also “open-weight”, so companies can customise and host them on their own servers, which is a clear advantage over US frontier models. 

Oh, and China’s president isn’t going around blocking non-Chinese citizens from using their LLMs, which is helpful too.

Corporate drones beware, Claude’s days of writing your one-line acknowledgement emails are numbered.

No, that picture isn't AI.

It’s a genuine picture of Leo Messi giving Lamine Yamal a bath.

In 2007, Lamine Yamal and his family won a prize draw to have a photoshoot with Leo Messi for a UNICEF calendar.

On Sunday, a now fully grown Lamine will face off against Messi when Spain take on Argentina in the World Cup final.

It’s the first time they’ve met on the pitch, as well as the first time they’ve met without Messi having a clear view of Lamine’s penis.

Given they're both signed to Adidas, their marketing team have the chance to do the funniest thing ever on Sunday.

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

Thanks to Harry & Faris