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Happy Friday you lovely people,

We begin today’s edition with a little poetry, the final verses of the 1927 Max Ehrmann poem Desiderata:

‘With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.’

Now enough of the sentimental stuff - let’s get you up to speed via memes so we can go and get fucked up.

⏰ Today's reading time is 5 minutes

Quote of the Week

Macron names ally Sébastien Lecornu as new French PM after previous government collapses

Emmanuel Macron has picked Sébastien Lecornu, his 39-year-old defence minister and close ally, as France’s new prime minister after François Bayrou’s government collapsed in a failed budget vote.

Lecornu becomes Macron’s seventh PM since 2017 and the fifth of his current presidency. Bear in mind, he still has 2 years left in his term…

The choice keeps power within Macron’s inner circle. Supporters say Lecornu’s years running France’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine give him credibility, while critics see more of the same from a president holed up with loyalists.

Communist wingnut leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon called for Macron’s resignation, while Marine Le Pen blamed the Arabs for it mocked the appointment as “the last shot from his bunker.”

Yes, that’s a Hitler killing himself reference in case you were wondering.

Whatever the case, Lecornu inherits a fiscal mess: France’s debt is € 3.3 trillion, approximately 114% of GDP. Granted, this isn’t the highest in Europe, as Greece and Italy (unsurprisingly) lead the way when it comes to debt as a % of GDP.

However, unlike France, Greece and Italy have actually taken steps to reduce their deficits in recent years.

Bayrou had proposed €44 billion in cuts but was toppled 364–194 when he tied his plan to a confidence vote. Because cutting government spending always goes down a treat in France.

In his ‘fuck the lot of you’ farewell address, Bayrou said “you have the power to bring down the government, but you do not have the power to erase reality.”

Well, reality may start to set in if credit agencies like Fitch downgrade France to an A- rating, putting it on the same level as the mighty Cyprus and Andorra.

In the meantime, the French will go and have a good ol’ protest about the whole thing.

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Keir Starmer has sacked Peter Mandelson aka Pervy Pete as Britain’s ambassador to Washington after it emerged that the former Labour powerbroker had closer ties to Jeffrey Epstein than previously disclosed.

Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty told MPs that Mandelson had failed to reveal the “extent and depth” of his friendship with Epstein, including 2008 emails in which he suggested the convicted sex offender’s first prosecution was “wrongful” and urged him to fight for early release.

These messages, uncovered by The Sun and circulating in Washington, had not been seen by No 10 when Mandelson was appointed.

A Foreign Office statement said the new information showed Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein was “materially different” from what had been understood, and that “mindful of the victims of Epstein’s crimes,” Starmer had ordered his removal with immediate effect.

Although to be be honest, reading through some of the messages, Mandelson should be resigning just off of how fucking weird they are.

The timing of all this isn’t great either.

The Donald is due in London next week for a state visit, and Mandelson’s relationship with the Orange Maniac was thought to be a key cog in good UK-US relations thus far.

Maybe that’s because they had a certain definitely not intelligence asset friend in common.

Oracle boss Larry Ellison briefly overtakes Elon Musk as world’s richest man

Larry Ellison aka the guy on the Forbes Rich List whose name you always forget, briefly overtook Elon Musk this week as the world’s richest person after Oracle shares surged more than 40% on the back of strong earnings and booming demand for its AI-focused cloud infrastructure.

His fortune hit $393 billion (£290 billion) on Wednesday morning, compared with Musk’s $385 billion (£284 billion), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.By the market close, Oracle had lost some of those gains, putting Musk back on top.

The rally came after Oracle announced a 77% jump in projected cloud revenue this year to $18 billion, fuelled by a rush of AI firms renting its data centres.

Ellison co-founded Oracle in 1977, riding the wave of a definitely not dodgy CIA project, and made his fortune selling boring database software.

Despite having more in common with a second-hand car salesman (“we can’t be successful unless we lie to customers”) than a dorky nerd billionaire, Larry has maintained pace with the worlds richest for decades and looks set to keep growing his fortune as the AI bubble boom continues.

Besides, he’s a bit of a throwback billionaire, with all the traditional rich-guy niche interests like yachting, tennis and owning 98% of Hawaii’s 6th largest island.

Definitely beats your main hobby being the Antichrist.

UK has ‘not concluded’ Israel carrying out genocide in Gaza

The UK government has told MPs it has not concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, despite international pressure and mounting criticism.

In a letter to the chair of parliament’s international development committee, then–foreign secretary (now Deputy Prime Minister) David Lammy said ministers had considered the issue but had not determined that Israel was acting with the “specific intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group” — the legal threshold under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Lammy is of course renowned for his scrupulous attention to detail.

Lammy admitted the government could not say whether Israel’s assault had breached humanitarian law, citing the difficulty of assessing military operations in densely populated areas.

They apparently had no such difficulties when it came to assessing Russian humanitarian breaches in densely populated areas, but that’s by the by.

He also rejected calls for an independent audit of UK arms sales (a booming business these days), and confirmed the government would not back changes to allow easier prosecution of foreign nationals in the UK for alleged war crimes — a move that might have enabled British courts to pursue Israeli leaders in any meaningful way.

Klarna valued at $19 billion in debut on Wall Street

Klarna has made its long-awaited Wall Street debut, the Swedish “buy now, pay later” firm pricing its US initial public offering (IPO) at $40 a share, raising $1.37 billion and valuing the company at about $15 billion, making over a dozen of its early employees millionaires overnight.

When trading opened, shares jumped 30% to $52, briefly pushing Klarna’s market capitalisation above $19 billion, before settling near $46 by the end of the session, leaving it worth roughly $17 billion.

It handled $105 billion in transactions in 2024, with more than 80% of adults in Sweden using Klarna last year to split their spending into interest-free payments.

The company has positioned itself as a challenger to credit cards, charging merchants a fee for transactions rather than relying mainly on interest payments.

Critics warn the model can encourage overspending (and credit cards don’t?) and Klarna’s financial results reflect the strain: revenues rose 24% to $2.8 billion last year, but losses widened to $52 million in the most recent quarter, compared with $7 million a year earlier.

Klarna had once been valued at over $45 billion after a 2021 investment from SoftBank, so the IPO still represents a steep comedown.

Chief exec Sebastian Siemiatkowski told staff the listing will give Klarna “fuel” to expand in more markets as it looks to join the likes of IKEA, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and blonde bombshells on the list of it’s biggest national exports.

We can’t wait to spread our hangxiety induced Uber Eats order over 5 interest-free payments of £4.99.

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at an event in Utah

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead this week while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.

Around 3,000 people were in the campus quad when, at about 12:20 local time on Wednesday, a single gunshot rang out as Kirk was answering a question on gun violence.

Eyewitnesses say he recoiled in his chair with blood visible on his neck before being carried into a vehicle and rushed to hospital, where he later died. He is survived by his parents, his wife and two young children.

Police say the fatal shot came from the roof of the nearby Losee Center, roughly 130 metres away. The killer has since been identified as 22 year old Tyler Robinson, whose own father reportedly turned him in.

One of the unshot bullet casings recovered by the authories was engraved with: “if you read this you are gay lmao.”

Kirk, 31, was one of the most prominent conservative activists in the US and a close ally of Donald Trump.

He co-founded Turning Point USA at 18 and built a brand through campus debates, social media and his daily podcast. Supporters saw him as a champion of free speech and a key figure in mobilising the young conservative vote. Trump himself said he “was like a son to him.”

A more critical view of his platform would be of it as a launchpad for hateful rhetoric, unverified conspiracy theories and a vehicle for generating social media clips of Kirk “debating” with blue-haired 17 year olds with an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex.

Jokes and memes aside, whatever the view of Kirk’s politics, there’s no denying that politically motivated violence has been on the rise in the worlds most influential nation.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk could prove to be a real fork in the road moment for a country that, lest us forget, has already had one civil war in it’s not so ancient history...

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Meme of the Week

Clanker of the Week

Whilst most Gen Zers can’t even get an interview these days, Albania are shooting light years ahead, having appointed the first ever Ai minister.

Diella, which means Sun in Albanian, has been put in charge of public procurement in an attempt to cut down on corruption.

Tackling corruption is one thing, but it’s going to be a while yet until we see Ai become the primary distributors of European cocaine.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

Barring an act of god or being kidnapped by Mossad, we’ll be back, bigger and better, next week.

We’re always open to feedback (and hate-mail), so feel free to reply and we’ll get back to you within 5 “working” days.

Thanks to Laurence and Rob