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Greetings lovely people,

It’s a bank holiday weekend, meaning we’ve got an extra day to day drink and conjure up memes for our loving audience and esteemed partners.

Don’t worry, unlike Ghislaine Maxwell’s old man, we’ll never go overboard.

Our mission to inform through memes is too important for us to afford to die of liver failure.

Enough rambling, let’s get stuck into the news.

⏰ Today's reading time is 57 minutes (just kidding, shouldn’t take you more than 6)

Elon Musk took the stand in Oakland on Tuesday to testify against Scam Altman and OpenAI, the company he co-founded, left in a huff, and is now trying to win back via a $150 billion lawsuit.

Elon’s central argument is that Altman turned OpenAI from a happy non-profit to a monstrous behemoth that’s sole aim was to make money.

A bit like his companies.

OpenAI's rebuttal is that Musk is a sore baby loser nerd who didn't get his way for once and is now throwing his toys out of the pram.

They claim that after watching ChatGPT become the most successful consumer AI product in history, Musk all of a sudden grew a conscience, and remembered how deeply he cares about nonprofit governance.

The judge, before proceedings began, had to tell Musk to stop posting about the case on X. 

Musk described founding OpenAI as a "counterweight to Google," said he came up with the name, recruited the key people, and raised the initial funding. 

He also revealed he once worked as a male-stripper lumberjack, which surprised everyone in the courtroom, who suddenly had the weird mental image of him in a checked shirt, jean shorts and work boots, trying to swing an axe properly.

Failed school ballroom shooter Cole Tomas Allen was hoping it would be a case of ‘third time lucky’ when he attempted to assassinate President Trump at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner last week.

No dice though, and he was tackled to the ground and apprehended by secret service before he could do any real damage.

In addition to trying to kill Trump, a terrorism-related charge that carries a potential life sentence, Allen faces two firearms charges related to his allegedly transporting two guns across state lines as he traveled from California to Washington by Amtrak train, and allegedly discharging one of those firearms during the incident.

Trump administration officials who were at the dinner, including acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for D.C., are looking to get him charged quickly, leaning heavily on an email Allen had sent to family just as he was breaching event security.

Ahhh so, now we’re paying attention to emails are we?

In that document, Allen allegedly wrote that he was targeting top Trump administration officials, with the highest ranking among them receiving top priority.

He allegedly wrote that he would “go through” others at the event to get to those officials, but that he was not targeting guests or hotel staff and had chosen buck shot rather than slugs to “minimise casualties” in the room.

What a saint.

Trump didn’t seem too bothered by the whole thing, saying that he ‘we live in a crazy world.’

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr was also calm as a cucumber throughout the ordeal. He was pictured not taking cover as everyone else in the ballroom ducked under the tables.

That lack of survival instinct could be explained by his family history.

The future of everyone’s favourite circle-jerk of tinpot dictators and grumpy autocrats, OPEC, is in doubt as the UAE is leaving the organisation today.

The UAE had been a member since 1967 but announced the move earlier this week. 

Needless to say, OPEC and its members are not pleased, as noted by JP Morgan analysts, the UAE’s exit would “reduce the cartel's ability to rig the oil price, as they clearly don’t have enough gold-plated G Wagons stabilise global oil markets”.

You have to feel for them, really.  

Once the UAE formally leaves, OPEC’s share of global oil production will fall to around 28%, having represented over half of global oil production in the 1970’s. 

Between the UAE’s longstanding unhappiness with OPEC’s Saudi-driven export quotas, and these two popping up around opposing factions in regional conflicts (e.g., the Sudanese civil war), all signs point to a Wagatha Christie-esque falling out between the UAE and Saudi Arabia in the near future.

Industry sources say that, without coordinated supply and oil production spread across more countries than previously, the volatility of oil prices will likely increase (once the ongoing US-Iran fisticuffs blow over, of course). 

We may even see a price war as relatively new major oil producers like Brazil and Guyana ramp up oil production.

A return to low prices may not be as far-fetched as you think. Remember $0 oil back in 2020?

Google has signed a deal giving the Pentagon access to its AI models for classified work, including, potentially, mission planning and weapons targeting.

The contract allows "any lawful government purpose”. And the US government always sticks to what is lawful.

The agreement technically bans autonomous weapons and domestic mass surveillance, but also explicitly states Google has no right to veto government decision-making i.e. the ‘shut the fuck up and just make the software you dorks’ clause.

The Pentagon has been pushing AI labs to strip standard restrictions from their models when operating on classified networks, and Google agreed to adjust its safety filters at the government's request.

The company coincidentally also deleted its own ethical guidelines on weapons last year. Teehee.

Over 600 employees wrote to Sundar Pichai asking him to refuse. A heartwearming display of worker solidarity perhaps, but ultimately useless, as Google went ahead with the deal anyway.

England's biggest shake-up to renting in thirty years kicked in today, with The Renters' Rights Act giving new rights to eleven million private renters, as well as significantly tightening the screws on landlords.

I personally always leave my landlord a 20% tip, just to motivate myself to work harder each month.

But not everyone is as stupid as I am built for this kind of life.

The TLDR of the whole thing:

But before renters start getting all giddy, there is a catch. Most courts are already backlogged, with median eviction proceedings taking 26 weeks, up from 16 a decade ago.

In response to the legislation, some landlords are even threatening to exit the market entirely.

With average rents at £1,377 a month and no caps in sight, that's not great news for anyone hunting a flat.

New research from the FT has found that average annual hours worked in the UK and US have converged at around 1,330 hours per person per year.

But if the UK were an American state, British voters think it would be the seventh wealthiest.

It would in fact actually rank 51st, behind Arkansas and Mississippi, not places typically associated with economic dynamism. 

American workers are 23% more productive per hour than British ones, whilst back in 2000 it was the other way around.

The average US worker produces $24 more per hour than they did in 2000. The average British worker produces just $6 more.

The research attributes Britain's increased hours partly to more comfortable, less physically demanding jobs, a polite way of saying we swapped doing actual work for sending a couple emails, going for a coffee and then fucking off to the pub at 5.

Now some among you may be saying ‘yeah well GDP per capita is a bad indicator of quality of life’, and you’d have a point.

In the interest of balance (and some good old British arrogance), it’s also worth pointing out that whilst we’d rank bottom in GDP per capita, we’d rank first in life expectancy, gun deaths, healthcare coverage (when you can get an appointment), years in education and paid maternity leave.

Context switching kills your focus. Every time you stop coding to type a Slack reply, write a ticket, or draft a PR description, it takes 23 minutes to get back in the zone.

Wispr Flow lets you dictate all of it without leaving your editor. Speak your response, your ticket, your commit message — Flow formats it and you're back to coding. Works system-wide inside Cursor, VS Code, Warp, Slack, Linear, and every app.

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In perhaps one of the most bizzare encounters ever, former British PM and professional party clown Boris Johnson was accosted outside a service station in Italy by a man claiming to have lost his dog.

Asked by the bloke if he’d seen ‘Rocco’, Boris, in surprisingly solid Italian, says he hadn’t.

The gentlemen then proceeded to show Boris a picture of the rather well endowed ‘Rocco’.

Based on the size of Rocco’s member, we are pretty sure of who he is named after.

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 & Jack