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The week's news in memes
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Happy Friday,
We pulled an all-nighter last night to ensure we got this out to you a little earlier than usual.
So no, you’re not hallucinating us in your inbox on this fine Friday morning.
In the off-chance you give a shit, the reason for the schedule change is that we’ve booked an all-day team building exercise for today (we’ll be day drinking excessively).
Now, without further ado - let’s get you the news you need to know in meme form.
⏰ Today's reading time is 5 minutes
Quote of the Week
“If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.”
Zelensky returns to the White House with European leaders to meet with Trump
What a difference a suit can make.
Volodymyr Zelensky travelled to Washington in a high-stakes bid to win fresh support for peace talks, meeting Donald Trump with a backing squad of seven European leaders, as well as NATO’s secretary-general Mark “Daddy” Rutte and the European Commission president Ursula von der Lesbian hair Leyen.
Unlike his last outing back in February, this one wasn’t a complete shitshow of the highest proportions. The Ukrainian President finally dropped the casual Fridays/Slavic Fidel Castro look for a nice all black suit, and it seemed to do the trick.
Trump himself thought he looked “fabulous.”
Once he’d finished drooling over Zelensky’s new look, the Orange Maniac proposed a bilateral meeting between the modestly successful comedian and Russian President Vladimir Putin, after which he would join them for three-way talks.
Russia has yet to respond to the proposal and has dismissed any deal on Ukraine’s future that doesn’t have Russia directly at the table as a “road to nowhere.”
Trump’s position on security guarantees for Ukraine was vague. He hasn’t ruled out some form of US commitment but made clear he doesn’t want an open-ended defence pact that could drag America deeper into the war.
Any kind of boots on the ground would most likely be from European nations like the UK, France and the Baltic states.
The proposal puts Trump at the centre of a potential negotiation process, but leaves huge unanswered questions: Would Putin agree to bilateral talks with Zelensky? Why does Putin carry a bag of shit around with him? And is Europe ready to go along with a US-brokered deal that might demand painful concessions from Ukraine?
Thousands are flocking to 2025’s “It Card”
This leading card now offers 0% interest on balance transfers and purchases until nearly 2027. That’s almost two years to pay off your balance, sans interest. So the only question is, what are you waiting for?
UK government considering new property tax on houses worth more than ÂŁ500,000
Rachel “From Accounts” Reeves is hunting for ways to plug a hole in Britain’s finances without touching the holy trinity of taxes—income tax, VAT and national insurance.
One of the most eye-catching ideas on the Treasury’s table is scrapping the capital gains (CGT) tax exemption on primary residences worth more than £1.5m.
Under this plan, anyone selling a home above that threshold would pay CGT—18% for basic-rate taxpayers and 24% for higher earners. Officials believe it could raise between £30 and 40 billion.
Other options being floated are even more fucked radical. The thinktank Onward has suggested an annual levy on property wealth, with rates starting at 0.54% on the portion of a home’s value above £500,000, and rising to 0.81% above £1 million.
Some ministers have floated the idea of ditching stamp duty altogether, replacing it with a new national property tax paid when a home is sold.
Governments really are at their most creative when finding new ways to extract money from its citizens, aren’t they?
Supporters argue that Britain’s tax system is skewed toward income rather than wealth, and that ignoring property as a source of revenue is no longer sustainable given the £51bn shortfall forecast by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
This is in spite of the fact that the UK still collects the most property tax in Europe as a % of GDP.
Trump weighs 10% government stake in Intel as SoftBank buys in
The White House confirmed it is working on a deal that could see the US take a 10% stake in Intel, marking a sharp shift in how Washington supports domestic chipmaking.
The plan would swap previously approved government grants for equity, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick arguing: “We should get an equity stake for our money.”
Considering a lot of their base think the OECD is a socialist organisation, they may have have a tough time selling them on the concept of state owned enterprises.
The move comes as Intel struggles to catch up with Nvidia, Samsung and TSMC in the AI chip race. A flagship new factory in Ohio is central to its turnaround, and the government’s involvement could give it momentum.
The deal would also underscore Trump’s “America First” push on critical industries like semiconductors, where reliance on foreign suppliers is seen as a national security risk.
The timing is notable: Japanese investment giant SoftBank just snapped up a $2 billion stake in Intel, sending its shares up nearly 7%.
The US has taken stakes in firms before—mainly banks during the 2008 financial crisis—so this Intel deal would set a new precedent.
Israel calls up 60,000 reservists ahead of planned Gaza City offensive
Israel is preparing a major escalation in Gaza, with around 60,000 reservists set to be called up ahead of an offensive on Gaza City, though active duty troops would lead the assault.
The appropriately named Defence Minister Israel Katz has formally approved the plan, which targets an area still home to hundreds of thousands of people.
It comes just days after Israel effectively ignored a Hamas-agreed ceasefire, which was linked to the release of more hostages, amid mass protests from Israelis calling for an end to the conflict.
The move has triggered sharp international backlash. French president Emmanuel Macron warned the assault “can only lead to a complete disaster for both peoples” and called for an international stabilisation force, whatever that means.
Jordan’s foreign minister, speaking in Moscow (ironic), accused Israel of “killing all prospects” for peace.
Meanwhile, aid groups say shelter materials are still not reaching Gaza despite Israeli assurances. Foreign militaries, including Jordan, the UAE, Germany and France, resorted to airdropping food today—154 pallets in total.
At the same time, Israel approved a long-controversial settlement project in the E1 corridor of the West Bank, an area critics say would permanently fragment Palestinian territory and torpedo the two-state solution.
Switzerland ready to give Putin immunity for peace talks
Switzerland has said it would grant Vladimir Putin immunity from arrest if he came to Geneva for hypothetical peace talks with Ukraine.
The Swiss foreign minister, Ignazio Cassis, confirmed the decision Tuesday, pointing to the country’s “special role” as the piggy bank for the worlds supervillains host of the UN’s European headquarters.
Putin has been under an International Criminal Court arrest warrant since 2023 for alleged war crimes in Ukraine. But given that an ICC arrest warrant is about as effective as a paper condom, they shouldn’t have any issues getting around it.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s foreign minister Antonio Tajani, suggested Geneva could be the ideal venue, leaning into Switzerland’s tradition of stashing away both sides’ money neutrality
The Kremlin, however, has not signed on. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said any such meeting would require “utmost care” in preparation, giving no indication that Putin is ready to sit across from Zelensky just yet, despite his landmark meeting with Trump last week.
The Swiss will hope Putin is more receptive to them than fellow despot Muammar Gaddafi was.
Palantir stock falls 12% in longest losing streak since April 2024
The AI defence software maker/privatised CIA-mass surveillance programme has dropped for six straight trading sessions, wiping out $73 billion in market value and knocking it out of the top 20 biggest U.S. companies.
The stock is now down about 18% from its peak earlier this month, when Peter Thiel-backed Palantir celebrated topping $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time.
The slide was accelerated by Citron Research, a short seller that branded Palantir’s valuation “detached from fundamentals,” arguing the stock should be closer to $40 when benchmarked against OpenAI’s price-to-revenue multiples.
Short sellers have since banked an estimated $1.6 billion in profits from the downturn, which they’ll presumably use to buy a shitloads of fentanyl-laced urine to spray at CEO Alex Karp.
But not everyone thinks the bubble has burst.
Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives insists Palantir could be a $1 trillion company within three years if it hits $12–20 billion in revenue and keeps fat cash margins.
Given that the company’s current annualised run rate is closer to $4 billion, those lofty ambitions are starting to enter “if my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle” terrority.
As our friends over at Jabroni Capital so eloquently put it…
How does he know about me and Peter?
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🍻Half Pints
Quick-fire news you might have missed
Meme of the Week
Diet of the Week
Now we know that the secret to ageing well isn’t daily teaspoons of olive oil or tracking your son’s erections - it’s smoking crack every 20 mins throughout your mid-30s.
Anyone with a reliable plug, feel free to get in touch.
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.
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Thanks to Jake and Fred
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