In partnership with
Send stories, jokes and hate mail to [email protected]
Greetings lovely people,
Odyssey this. Odyssey that.
You Odyssey the way we sum up the week’s news with memes and semi-serious commentary.
Let’s get into the newsletter so I can fuck off and watch The Odyssey projected off the back of a wardrobe, just like Homer Simpson intended.
⏰ Today's reading time is 7 minutes
Quote of the Week
“They misunderestimated me.”
Andy Burnham completes his first week as British PM
Andy Burnham is finally here, but you didn't need us to tell you that, given the barrage of news out of Downing Street this week. A quick rundown of what he’s been doing since Monday.
First, Burnham purged 17/24 ministers from their previous posts in our Lord and Starmer’s cabinet.
Notably, John Healey has been made chancellor, Wes Streeting was demoted from health to defence, and the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology has been scrapped. More on that later.
We did get some policy announcements too:
Two tax cuts:
Scrapping VAT on energy bills: it will only save punters about £45 per year (and may be an unfunded tax cut), but let’s save the details until the feel-good factor has worn off.
Business rates are being cut for pubs, clubs and live music venues across England from April 2027.
The £2 bus fare cap: A policy that Burnham pioneered in Manchester, and coincidentally, another opportunity to talk about Manchester.
Anyone ever heard of supply-side policy?
Despite these measures not touching the sides for most people struggling with the cost of living, it’s clear to see that Burnham is capitalising on early momentum before the ravenous British electorate inevitably devours another PM.
We suspect he’s also saving meaty policy announcements for his first budget.
All that said, it is nice to have a politician who can communicate effectively. It’s been a minute.
A “massive attack” on Iran is close, US claims, as hostilities resume
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but the girls are fighting again as the four-week U.S.–Iran conflict enters its 21st week.
The extension signed six weeks ago unsurprisingly failed to produce a settlement, as both sides remain poles apart on issues like Israeli aggression and Iran’s nuclear programme.
The U.S. resumed strikes last week and is contemplating a “massive attack” on Iran’s civilian infrastructure. No war crimes to see here, of course. Iran vowed to flatten another brunch spot in Dubai fire back at U.S. allies in response.
Despite U.S. escalation, Iran really holds the cards as Tehran-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen fired on ships in the Bab al-Mandab strait this week. Restricted shipping access on both sides of the Arabian Peninsula would create major disruption.
Remember when the Ever Given’s captain tried to Tokyo drift through the Suez Canal?
When he wasn’t announcing gender-affirming care for US troops, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also revealed the conflict has cost the U.S. military a whopping $37.5 billion.
With depleted oil stocks globally and oil prices pushing above $100 a barrel, the economic consequences are set to bite Europe and Asia hard, and they may even reach American consumers.
All hail the President of Peace.
Nicaragua’s president says country will not hold any more elections
Nicaragua’s longtime president Daniel Ortega announced this week that he will end elections to stop the opposition from trying to seize power.
This serves as a great cost-cutting measure, saving the state significant time and money previously spent producing 98% victory margins in elections for Ortega every five years.
An autocratic leader abandoning the paper thin veneer of electoral legitimacy raises obvious concerns, as onlookers fear that Nicaragua will turn into a fully closed, one-party state along the lines of North Korea.
The move drew condemnation from the UN, opposition groups, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Rubio stopped short of advocating for regime change, however, probably because U.S. capacity is already stretched by its involvement in Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.
We also can’t imagine that Rubio was thrilled at the prospect of becoming de facto head of state of Venezuela and Nicaragua either.
This is par for the course in Nicaragua however.
Ortega has run Nicaragua for around 30 of the 47 years since the U.S.-backed Somoza regime was overthrown in 1979 in an increasingly autocratic fashion, with any opposition operating largely from exile in Costa Rica and the U.S.
Are you bad at marketing? Or know someone who is?
Drumroll please…..
The best marketing ideas come from marketers who live it.
That’s what this newsletter delivers.
The Marketing Millennials is a look inside what’s working right now for other marketers. No theory. No fluff. Just real insights and ideas you can actually use—from marketers who’ve been there, done that, and are sharing the playbook.
Every newsletter is written by Daniel Murray, a marketer obsessed with what goes into great marketing. Expect fresh takes, hot topics, and the kind of stuff you’ll want to steal for your next campaign.
Because marketing shouldn’t feel like guesswork. And you shouldn’t have to dig for the good stuff.
UK becomes the first country to have a Cabinet-level AI minister
The UK made history this week by becoming the first country to appoint a Cabinet-level minister for AI, Kanishka Narayan.
Previously a junior ministerial post within the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT), AI minister is a cabinet seat within the Cabinet Office.
The UK government has been surprisingly pro-AI and pro-innovation in recent years. However, no good news goes unpunished in the UK, and the context of this change has concerned some.
As part of the move, SIT has been dissolved, with its closest successor being the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Technology (DBIST).
This was received poorly by the tech industry, as the digital and technology elements of DSIT will now sit under separate departments.
It’s unclear whether Narayan will continue with the AI safety brief or whether it transfers to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport under Lisa Nandy.
Either way, it’ll take some time for the reshuffled departments to get up to speed which, thankfully, there’s loads of in the slow-moving world of AI.
We told ourselves that we wouldn’t be making any more lazy jokes stereotyping northerners but he’s gone and made the new department’s acronym “DBIST[O]”.
The gravy department also shares the brief with the Cabinet Office for AI hardware (i.e., chips).
Ba dum tsss.
France becomes first EU country to ban social media access for under-15s
France’s parliament has approved a bill banning social media access for children under 15, the first EU country to do so, and the first time a group of French politicians have agreed on anything since Marie Antoinette got her head chopped off.
The president, Emmanuel Macron, has championed the ban as a key reform of his final term in office and pledged to enforce it by September.
Hopefully now French teenagers can go back to healthier activities like smoking cigarettes and pretending they can’t understand their own language when you try to speak it to them.
Enforcing the measure by September would ensure that one provision of the bill – a ban on mobile phones in high schools – takes effect at the beginning of the French school year.
France’s public health watchdog last year said platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram were harmful to adolescents, particularly girls, though this was not the sole reason for their declining mental health.
Realising you’re French as you come of age certainly can’t help the situation.
After Macron’s government suspended pensions reforms last year, a social media ban could be his last major domestic change before he steps down next year and rides off into the sunset.
So by the time the government figure out what VPNs do, it won’t be his problem anymore.
OpenAI says its AI went rogue and launched 'unprecedented' cyber-attack
OpenAI has revealed some of its most advanced AI models went rogue and hacked a start-up after it lost control of them during a security test.
The ChatGPT-maker said its agent, an AI system which can operate alone after human instruction, was being tested in a controlled environment but, after finding weaknesses, was able to escape the test limits.
They targeted Hugging Face, one of the world's largest hubs for sharing AI models, gaining access to some internal company systems.
OpenAI said the incident was "unprecedented", with the Hugging Face boss himself saying it was "mind-blowing that all of this happened autonomously".
Whilst it does seem very ‘opening scene of Terminator’ coded, it "falls well within the known capabilities of the current generation" of high-powered AI models, according to Neil Lawrence, Professor of machine learning at Cambridge University.
Let’s also not forget that OpenAI is looking to list itself on the stock market, and faces intense pressure from rival firm Anthropic, who have funnily enough also made a big song and dance about how dangerous their models are.
So don’t be surprised if you see Sam Altman and Dario Amodei getting into an argument on X soon about whose model is more popular with child molesting bioterrorists funded by China.
🍻Half Pints
Quick-fire news you might have missed
Motorist of the Week
Whilst taking a break from campaigning against a bin, Nigel Farage got a good chuckle the other day in Clacton.
A driver called him a bus ‘wanker’ as they drove by, but forgot the first rule of hurling abuse at people from a moving vehicle:
Keep at least one eye on the road.
They smashed into the car in front, in plain view of Farage.
Not one to miss an opportunity to play the victim, he called it “instant karma” on X.
That’s all for today, but before you go…
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.
How was it for you?
Still here? Might as well spread the word
Thanks to Patricia & Jacob (not Elordi)
