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Greetings beautiful people,

Fun fact: today is our 100th edition. It seems like only yesterday that we sent out our very first edition.

We were so drunk that we didn’t even even manage to send it out to the 3 people we’d practically begged to be on list, so it went out to literally no one.

Now we have interns. How times change.

Anyway, let’s get you informed on what happened in the world this week through memes and irreverent commentary.

⏰ Today's reading time is 7 minutes

Flávio Bolsonaro and his Liberal party have won the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections against incumbent President Lula Da Silva. 

Flávio, the eldest son of jailed ex-President Jair, won around 47% of the vote against Lula’s 45%.

A friendly reminder that Jair Bolsanaro is currently serving a 27 year sentence for trying to stage a coup when he lost the 2022 election. He got that bumped down to house arrest due to his particular vicious case of the hiccups (yes, really).

The Libs also swept both houses of Brazil’s congress, with the Senate becoming the most powerful congressional caucus since the establishment of Brazil’s democratic constitution in 1988.

And as it’s Latin America, you can bet your feijão that Jair's wife, two of his other sons and younger brother all won seats in Congress. 

South American countries do have a thing for electing the children of nutcase despots as of late.

Combine that for the recent wingnut wave that has been sweeping the continent (just ask the Argies how that’s going), and things aren’t looking good for the Brazilian left, lead by the long serving Lula, who is seeking a 4th term in office.

It’s even got to the point that some Brazilian lefties on X are actively asking the Chinese to intervene and stage a revolution.

They’ve got a better chance of getting Neymar Jr. to stop flirting with his sister.

Exhibiting their remarkable ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the Green Party have suffered a devastating collapse in the polls this week.

The turn comes following news that the party, in the wake of a hotly contested vote, had officially adopted the policy ‘Zionism is racism’.

The party also officially supports "a single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine", a region which includes modern-day Israel.

The notion passing a couple of days before the anniversary of the October 7th massacre is a real chefs kiss in comedic timing and/or incredibly insensitive, depending on how you want to see it.

The motion passed 1022-813, the latter number representing the fraction of the Green Party who would actually quite like to maybe just get elected for once.

The Israeli government have responded uncharacteristically furiously, going as far as to ban the party’s leader, Zach Polanski, who 1) didn’t support the motion and 2) is Jewish, from entering the country.

When approached for comment, a cabinet spokesperson responded that they “just feel kinda ehhh about the guy”, later revealing that they had no knowledge of the motion at all.

In an act described universally as “well, duh”, the French have taken to the streets.

This time, in protest over the perceived underfunding of the nation’s schools, which are allegedly characterised by teacher shortages, poor infrastructure, and an inhumane amount of French.

Following a brutally hot summer and mass absences by teachers, hundreds of thousands of students have faced off with riot squads for approaching a week.

In efforts to demonstrate how worthwhile it would be to invest in their futures, some more passionate students have escalated from general tomfoolery to certified hijinks, including petty vandalism, spray-painting and setting fire to helpless bystanders. All in the spirit of Liberté, égalité, fraternité of course.

The French demonstrations mirror a similar wave of protests which occurred in 1998, and ultimately resulted in the government pledging almost €1 billion to renovate schools, as well as the hiring of 14,000 extra staff.

Our French correspondent put down his baguette and saucisson (served at the protest of course) to ask President Macron what he thought of the whole thing.

“I’m leaving soon, so it’s not my fucking problem to deal with. Besides, I always got along with my teachers. Why can’t the kids today do the same?”

He presumably wasn’t too happy when he saw the public broadcaster show a protester holding up a sign saying “Macron fuck your teacher, not ours.”

In between rehearsals for his The Smiths tribute act and debating whether pork scratchings are acceptable pub scran with the Chancellor, we’re 78% sure the British PM has been playing Fantasy Parliament.

Months before British Prime Minister Andy ‘This Charming Man’ Burnham announced a ban on airlines charging people extra to sit next to their children on flights, the policy was proposed in the game by parliamentarian_502553.

It’s the most realistic political simulator ever, where you draft super realistic policy, deal with the the media, voters, interest groups and more.

We’ve almost fired people here for playing it too much at the office. No wonder Andy’s been having a look.

Sign up and play for free today.

Spain is off to the polls. Patrick Bateman Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has called a snap general election for 29 November, even though he didn't need to hold one until summer 2027.

The main reason was the Spanish parliament rejecting two decree laws from his minority government that were meant to protect renters.

The decrees followed the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal from the Madrid flat she'd lived in for more than 70 years, on a sweetheart deal that was made law under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

A legal glitch let her landlord hike the rent from €500 to €2,650 a month. Even after it was "lowered" to €1,650, it was still €300 more than her monthly pension.

Tens of thousands marched in Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona on Saturday. The good news is her lawyer soon confirmed she'd be able to go home.

The bad news is she died two days ago.

The only thing that would have pissed people off more is if Pedro had gone and personally bludgeoned her to death himself.

In a televised address, Sánchez said he needs "a broader progressive majority" to "overcome the resistance of the elites", despite admitting that "we have made mistakes".

Some of those mistakes in question:

Polls suggest the conservative People's Party will come out on top, but it would probably need hard-right Vox to actually govern.

We tried to get some boots on the ground in Madrid via our Spanish correspondent, but he was having a siesta.

‘We are disappointed with the quality of Mistral The French,’ Ecosia Search Engine Germans claim. 

In a move of great European unity and collaboration, the German search engine Ecosia, has this week announced, that it will ditch its French AI partner Mistral and will bet on open-source models, including those from China instead. 

Beyond the eternal Frogs and the Krauts shitting on each other element of it, the Ecosia-Mistral drama actually has some wider geopolitical tensions behind it.

Ecosia is concerned that Mistral doesn’t align with its environmental goals, because of the high levels of nuclear power relied on in France’s energy mix.

Nuclear power has been unpopular in Germany since the 1970s, and this unpopularity peaked with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the 2011 Fukushima disaster, which further motivated then Chancellor Angela Merkel to do away with nuclear power altogether in Germany.

Now, in its green temper tantrum, Ecosia has split from Mistral and is partnering with the AI platform Melious, which boasts a range of open source models, including Chinese models Qwen, GLM, and Kimi.

One must presume that Ecosia know that China’s biggest energy source isn’t vegetable oil or the power of friendship, but coal.

Scheiße!

On Thursday the Orange Maniac took to Truth Social to declare that the White House "considers anyone that uses the term, 'Artificial Intelligence,' as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, 'Super Intelligence,' THE ENEMY!"

It follows his executive order ordering every federal department to say "SI" instead of "AI" and to "not acknowledge" the old term at all.

Before that, he'd run a Truth Social poll asking followers to choose between "Super Intelligence", "Superior Intelligence" and "Extreme Intelligence".

He came up with all of them while staring in the mirror trying to figure out where his bald patch was.

Trump’s atrocious hair aside, allow us to put on our tin foil hats for a moment on this whole .si thing…

There’s no smoke without fire with these things, and most of Trump & family’s recent moves would make your average African dictator look like a boy scout.

Some caveats before our in house lawyer threatens to chop my balls off in fear of a libel lawsuit:

A) The domain registrar keeps ownership details private, so nobody has shown who bought them.
B) No link to the Trump family has been proven.

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In the same week Albania rolled out an AI hologram of their capital’s mayor to give a speech (the real one is in prison), the Serbs managed to upstage their neighbours yet again.

Former President Aleksandar Vučic, who recently resigned so that he could run for Prime Minister, spent close to an hour talking to a rock on live television.

Balkan politicians, never ever change.

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 their legally mandated half an hour of fresh air.

Thanks to Patrick & Faris