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It’s time for your weekly news digest of the news through memes and silly commentary.

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A sharp sell-off in chip and AI stocks wiped out over $1.3tn in U.S. equities this week, as markets experienced “AI jitters” (to put it mildly) during Q2 earnings.  

Nvidia led the charge dropping by 5% on Monday with Meta then dipping 8% on Thursday.

Jensen Huang can still afford his leather jackets (for now), but spare a thought for Korean retail traders.

Over 350,000 leveraged trading accounts were liquidated and a further 1.2m margin called because the KOSPI dropped over 20% this week. 

SK Hynix, the second biggest stock in the index, suffered almost a 30% drop as it missed its earnings target despite posting a 557% increase in profits versus Q2 2025.  

Mr Beast will be organising a real life Squid Games at this rate.

There were also some winners, however.

Apple became the world’s most valuable company again, surpassing a $5tn market cap while Microsoft stock jumped 15% as earnings beat expectations.

It’s not clear why the pullback happened this week, but Nvidia signing up for another circular financing deal and an unnamed Chinese company mass producing advanced lithography machines may have caused some investors to engage in some critical thinking.

Some may also be taking profits, as the S&P 500 has been moving sideways since mid-May.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), a non-partisan think tank, has published a report this week telling Andy Burnham that there is no more scope for borrowing to fund his fiscal plans.

The report argues that spending cuts or tax rises must instead pay for measures such as the cut to VAT and £2 bus fare cap, as the oil shock and its effects on growth and inflation cut into the Government’s fiscal headroom by about £24bn. Nice. 

This is tough reading for Burnham, no doubt, as he’s just announced another £8.4bn of public spending to replace Britain’s ageing nuclear submarines. 

Already, it looks like Oprah Burnham is giving everything to everyone, and it’s unclear how he will balance the books. Proposed solutions to pay for social care include a revamp of inheritance tax, and a small “levy” (and no increase to income tax) on the incomes of people aged 35 or over.  

He’s also apparently told Dementia Donald that he’ll be “pragmatic” when it comes to North Sea oil and gas as a revenue source. 

We respect pragmatism and diplomacy albeit the timing isn’t great, given that swathes of Europe are experiencing definitely not climate change-linked drought and wildfires. 

A nice easy slate for his second week in the job.

Following the FIFA Peace Prize and Folarin Balogun’s red card suspension, professional egg-lookalike greaseball and president of FIFA Gianni Infantino has announced yet another attack on the beautiful game.

Under Infantino’s latest proposal, FIFA’s commercial rights would be spun out into a for-profit vehicle (FIFA Forward Enterprises or FFE), in which non-controlling stakes would be sold to outside (i.e, Trump-affiliated) investors. 

The FFE venture could raise $15bn, and national associations are each being offered $40m in bribes “forward funding” to support the plan by the 19th of September and not ask questions.

Associations and key stakeholders have noted that this was completely hidden from them until it was reported by The Times, and that there was no consultation process.  

Member associations have already strongly condemned the plans, with UEFA telling Infantino the game is not his to sell and threatening a full boycott of FIFA competitions. 

That the scheme is too corrupt even for CONCACAF, which tells you everything you need to know. 

Whether Infantino presses ahead or FFE goes the way of the European Super League is to be seen given the extent of the backlash. Either way, this probably won’t help his re-election campaign later this year.  

Infantino’s flagrant cash grabbing has us yearning for the days of his predecessor Sepp Blatter, who at least kept it classy with discreet backhanders in the style of a sleazy provincial French mayor.

But it doesn't have to be that way. 

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It's one of the easiest ways to catch what you're not being told, without doomscrolling 152 different outlets that are all trying to pitch you on how they see the world, not on what's actually happening. 

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Donald Trump announced yesterday that his Board of Piss Peace had reached an agreement with Hamas to disarm and transfer civilian and security control of Gaza to a new Palestinian technocratic government.

If implemented, the agreement would represent a dramatic breakthrough in Trump's 20-point Gaza peace plan and clear the way for reconstruction of the devastated enclave.

Israeli officials remain deeply skeptical that Hummus will surrender its weapons, while comments from a senior Hamas official suggest the sequencing of disarmament and Israel's withdrawal could still be contested.

Under the agreement, an international stabilisation force led by Tony Blair wearing a keffiyeh would help train the new Palestinian police, assist with weapons collection, and deploy between Palestinian-controlled areas and Israeli forces.

A Board of Peace official said the agreement was designed around "zero trust" because Hamas and Israel each made clear from the outset that they did not trust the other side.

Sounds like a fantastic basis for a peace agreement. I might suggest a similar framework for my upcoming divorce hearing. 

In an open letter, top staffers from the biggest AI and technology companies urged the US government to slow the pace of artificial intelligence development so that China safety and security measures can catch up. 

The US government should support an international effort to develop tools that can “deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development,” according to the letter.

More than 1,000 employees from frontier AI companies signed the letter, including the chief scientist of OpenAI, one of the ChatGPT developer’s original cofounders, the guy who built the first Terminator, some of Anthropic’s co-founders and vice presidents at Meta, Google and others.

You would think that the overall message of the letter would be pretty uncontroversial, but apparently not. 

The biggest name missing from the signatories is little old Anthropic, who, despite literally breaking off from OpenAI over safety concerns, have found that making a shit-tonne of money as the leading AI firm is much more fun.

CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei penned a response to the letter, which essentially boils down to: “uhhh yeah but what if the Chinese surpass us? Thought about that?!” 

Admittedly I did read the thing 4 beers deep, but that is pretty much the gist of it. 

Italy is suspending ⁠the EU’s ⁠border-free ​Schengen arrangements with Spain in response ⁠to a mass influx of ⁠migrants into the ​Spanish enclave ‌of Ceuta ‌from neighbouring Morocco. 

PM Giorgia Meloni’s and her Foreign Ministry clearly don’t have any maps handy in the office, given that if they did, they would quickly see that the country ‌does not have a land border with Spain. 

They also presumably have no fucking clue what Schengen is or does, given that any migrants in Ceuta have no onward route to the EU given the territory’s special status under the rules. 

Either way, the right-wing overreaction measure will impact ‌people travelling by plane or ​boat between the two countries.

Some 60,000 people are locally estimated to have crossed into the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco in the last 24 hours, as part of an attempt to overwhelm the Spanish border.

Spanish prime minister and honorary King of Morocco Pedro Sánchez said the crossings violated Spain’s territorial integrity, as he blamed anyone but himself human trafficking gangs for wilfully misleading people about changes to Spain’s migration rules and triggering the border run.

In a devastating blow to the ‘let’s just get rid of borders and sing kumbaya’ European liberals, some 25,000 people were returned to Morocco today, as Spanish authorities pledged to crack down on illegal migration and expedite returns. 

The EU has called the situation “unacceptable,” and is currently drafting a strongly worded statement that they will put out once their social media officer is back from holiday. 

Thanks to the dream team of the Albanian Shqiptare and Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, Europe’s cocaine is becoming cheaper and purer.

It transpires that if you allow brutal mafias to come in and kill and/or kidnap rival dealers, you get better outcomes for the consumer.

Even the most vehement socialists among you will be able to appreciate this beautiful example of the invisible hand of the free market in action.

The future is white bright.

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Thanks to Roberto & Dom