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Greetings lovely people,

We’re absolutely buzzing in the office today.

New research suggests that pints of lager may actually be good for you, as they are a vital source of Vitamin B6, whatever the hell that is.

But before we go off and treat our bodies like the temples that they are, let’s get you up to speed on what happened in the UK and beyond this week.

With memes and silly commentary, of course.

⏰ Today's reading time is 7 minutes

We tried to use RFKs logic to file our taxes.

Suffice to say it didn’t go too well:

Anthropic, the company founded by safety conscious ex-OpenAI employees, has announced that someone gained unauthorised access to Claude Mythos, its AI cybersecurity model deemed too dangerous to release to the public.

Pretty sure that’s how the first Terminator film starts, no?

Mythos is described as capable of finding and exploiting security vulnerabilities at a scale and speed no human could match.

Oh wait no, it’s the bad guy from Avengers: Age of Megatron.

Either way, it’s the kind of tool you'd want to keep extremely tightly controlled, and not accidentally leave accessible to some bloke doing some contract work for a vendor.

Anthropic says there's no evidence of malicious use.

The people who accessed it apparently didn't want to actually hack anything because they had absolutely no idea what they were doing didn't want to be detected.

The UK's top cybersecurity official called advanced AI a potential "net positive."

Presumably before he read this story.

In February, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump's tariffs were illegal because he clearly has early-onset dementia and should really be in a home he had exceeded his presidential authority.

The government must now refund approximately $166 billion to the importers who paid them, plus interest, which is the largest court-ordered repayment in American history.

Over 3,000 companies, including FedEx and Costco, had already sued to secure their refunds before the ruling was even made.

The administration is accepting applications but has suggested it could take months to actually pay anyone, and has declined to confirm it won't go back to court to try and block the refunds anyway.

The people who actually paid higher prices, meaning ordinary Americans, cannot apply for anything, except for maybe a quick ‘um, go fuck yourself.’

Whether businesses pass the savings on to consumers is, to put it generously, absolutely not happening entirely unclear.

The White House has not commented on whether Trump would consider penning ‘The Art of Losing $166 billion’ as the spiritual sequel to ‘The Art of the Deal’.

Despite being handed a government that commands a majority of 165 in the least constrained executive anywhere in the democratic world, Keir Starmer seems determined to make governing Britain as difficult as possible.

Disgraced ‘best friend’ of Jeffrey Epstein Peter Mandelson failed his in-depth security vetting before being appointed British Ambassador to the United States.

Foreign Office officials, rather than telling the Prime Minister he was about to appoint someone whose polite nickname was The Prince of Darkness, overrode the recommendation using a rare authority.

Why, you may ask?

Because Starmer had already announced the appointment publicly - i.e. to save him looking like a bit of a mug.

Starmer told parliament Monday he was unaware of the failed vetting, that it’s "beggars belief" that officials withheld this information, and that he should not have appointed Mandelson.

The man blamed for not telling Starmer, senior civil servant Olly Robbins, was thrown under the bus fired.

He is now taking legal advice and, according to the Financial Times, "feels aggrieved.”

For the Americans amongst you, ‘aggrieved’ is British English for angry enough to sue, but not angry enough to shoot up your former place of work with an M16.

Robbins described "constant pressure" from Downing Street's private office to get Mandelson in Washington before Trump's inauguration, whatever the risk.

Starmer responded by telling cabinet Robbins was "a man of integrity" who made "an error of judgment."

Which is convenient for ol’ Keir given it’s saved his skin…for now.

After 15 years of making people with Androids seem they’re at the rock bottom of some sort of caste system, Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple CEO.

His replacement is John Ternus, current head of hardware engineering, a 25-year Apple veteran, and the man responsible for transitioning Macs from Intel chips to Apple's own silicon.

Cook leaves Apple worth $4 trillion, up from $350 billion when he took over, which is an extraordinary achievement for a man critics spent fifteen years calling Anderson Cooper "not Steve Jobs."

His most notable solo product launch was the Apple Vision Pro, a £3,500 headset that approximately nobody gave a shit about, which his friends at Meta will recognise as a deeply relatable experience.

Ternus is described as a "product guy" who will apparently rescue Apple from its reputation for incremental innovation updates.

It’s frankly shocking that he got the job, considering how bare his LinkedIn is.

Germany has unveiled its first standalone military strategy since the Second World War, with plans to become Europe's strongest conventional fighting force by 2039.

This includes expanding its army from 185,000 to 260,000 soldiers, and growing its reserves from 60,000 to 200,000.

Oh, and annexing Sudentenland.

Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (no related to Oscar) identified Russia as the primary threat and declined to share classified details of the threat assessment.

He joked that doing so would be like "adding Putin to our email distribution list," which doesn’t help the stereotype that Germans are about as funny as a children’s hospital.

Conscription is embedded in the new military service law as a fallback if recruitment targets are missed.

Recruitment is currently running 10% above last year.

The whole strategy is titled "Responsibility for Europe”, which is a decidely more reassuring and catchy slogan than “The Third Reich”, so fingers crossed that it all turns out better for them than last time around.

Talk about ‘trial and error’.

If you think lawyers are just moneygrabbing, morally-flexible mercenaries who defend the interests of the wealthy and unscrupulous, then think again. 

Top-flight firm Sullivan and Cromwell, while defending Prince Group (one of the good guys), admitted to a US federal judge this week that inaccuracies in a filing made this month were caused by AI hallucinations. 

The document cited law that didn’t exist, misquoted previous cases, and contained such inaccuracies that S&C submitted three pages of corrections in an apology letter to the judge.

S&C’s partners reportedly charge $2,000+ per hour in cases like these, which makes you wonder whether they also billed their client for time spent de-slopifying documents. 

Billable hours are billable hours, after all.

If the mistakes themselves weren’t embarrassing enough, it was also the other law firm on the case that discovered the mistakes. 

For the non-lawyers, a football analogy: this is like being nutmegged by another player who then bangs it top corner and, during his celebration, gets a kiss on the cheek from your missus.

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Frankly, we've been kind of blown away by the opportunities Alts get access to. 

They're run by some very smart and high integrity people that we're very proud to work with.

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If you’re accredited and ready to explore, this is where it happens.

Oversleeping and finding out you’ve missed the hotel breakfast is a shit feeling.

So you can surely have some sympathy for this particular Rhodesian Zimbabwean crocodile.

The 4m long beast climbed out of the River Zambezi and made a beeline straight for the kitchen, after finding the buffet restaurant closed.

Here he is trying to ring the bell at a reception desk, presumably to politely enquire as to the breakfast hours.

He was safely captured and returned to the river, with nothing more than an empty stomach.

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 Sam, Max & Dom