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Happy Friday you lovely people,

We’re fully in the throes of the post-holiday blues. In other words, we will all be extremely intoxicated over the next 48 hours.

But this isn’t the Mediterranean; we have work and responsibilities, chiefly getting you your weekly dose of politics and business news through memes.

So without further ado, let’s get straight into the news you need to know.

⏰ Today's reading time is 5 minutes

Quote of the Week

UK to lower voting age to 16 in landmark electoral reform

The UK is considering lowering the national voting age to 16, making it one of the first European countries to do so.

The proposed reforms, announced by the new Labour government, would align national elections with local votes in Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands, where 16-17 year olds already vote.

The government is framing the move as a way to “future-proof” democracy and boost civic engagement.

Proponents argue that it could build lifelong voting habits by tying it to civic education. No mention of any civic education/politics modules being made mandatory in schools however.

Conservative MPs and right-leaning think tanks argue that 16-year-olds are old enough to vote, but not to drink, marry, eat condoms on Youtube, join the army or even stand for election—raising concerns about political opportunism rather than democratic principle.

Internationally, Austria and Malta already allow voting from 16, as do several countries in South America. But most of the world still sets the bar at 18.

Alongside the voting age reform, the UK government also wants to expand acceptable forms of voter ID, allowing digital IDs, Tesco clubcards and UK-issued bank cards to be used at polling stations.

If passed, these changes could be in place before the next general election, setting the stage for a younger, potentially more left-leaning, electorate.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial was abruptly halted (again) this week as Israeli airstrikes slammed into Damascus, including areas near Syria’s Defense Ministry and Presidential Palace.

At least one person was killed and 18 injured. Israel’s government says the strikes were a response to recent clashes involving Druze militants in Suwayda, a southern Syrian city.

Well, there goes Netanyahu’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination…

Israel’s defence minister warned Damascus that “warnings have ended” and “painful blows” would now follow. A cease-fire deal was later brokered in Suwayda, with Druze leaders agreeing to reintegrate the region into the Syrian state.

This marks the third country Israel has bombed in 24 hours, after strikes in Lebanon targeting Hezbollah and an earlier hit on Iran.

It’s also raising eyebrows due to Syria’s recent attempts to avoid war with Israel—including halting weapons shipments to Hezbollah and floating the idea of peace talks.

Shockingly, none of that stopped the missiles.

Netanyahu is facing charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust—as well as war crimes in Gaza, where over 211,000 people have been killed, injured or are missing since the war began.

Some observers claim the Syria strikes were a desperate move to distract from his trial or to shore up a collapsing coalition.

Zuckerberg and Meta investors reach settlement in $8 billion privacy case

Mark Zuckerberg and other top current and former Meta execs—including Marc “The Sentient Egg” Andreessen and Sheryl “Come to Bed” Sandberg—have agreed to settle an $8 billion lawsuit over repeated violations of Facebook users’ privacy.

The deal came just as a Delaware court trial was entering its second day. No terms were disclosed and Meta itself wasn't a defendant.

Shareholders had accused the group of allowing Facebook to operate as a data-harvesting machine in defiance of a 2012 FTC agreement.

That led to the record $5 billion FTC fine in 2019, which they now wanted Zuckerberg & friends. to personally reimburse. The case hinged on "Caremark" oversight claims—some of the hardest to prove in U.S corporate law.

By settling, Zuckerberg avoids having to prove he is human taking the stand (again), as does Sandberg, who was sanctioned during the case for deleting potentially incriminating emails.

This is the second major court showdown Zuckerberg has dodged, the first being a 2017 trial over a stock plan that would’ve helped him retain power while cashing out.

Now “The Zuck” can fully focus his energy towards poaching his rivals employees and injecting large amounts of Testosterone.

Personal details of UK special forces and spies were included in Afghan data breach

A catastrophic data breach at the UK Ministry of Defence has exposed the identities of over 100 British officials—including MI6 agents and special forces—alongside nearly 19,000 Afghan nationals who worked with the British military.

The leak, which occurred in February 2022 but wasn’t discovered until August 2023, has now been partially unsealed after being protected by a "super-injunction" that banned even reporting its existence.

The breach happened when an MoD staffer at UK Special Forces HQ accidentally emailed a confidential spreadsheet of more than 30,000 resettlement applications to someone outside the government, believing the file contained just 150 records.

Good to see those Civil Service entrance exams are still as rigorous as ever…

The recipient, located in Afghanistan, later posted parts of the data on Facebook and hinted at releasing the rest.

This led to the UK quietly extracting him under what officials privately described as "essentially blackmail”, which is polite British-speak for “we’ve just been fucking blackmailed.”

Defence Secretary John Healey called it a monumental fuck up of the highest proportions “serious departmental error” and admitted this was just one of multiple data failures tied to Afghan relocation efforts.

Von der Leyen unveils hugely increased 'strategic' €2 trillion EU budget

German Hillary Clinton Ursula von der Leyen has unveiled a bold €2 trillion EU budget proposal for 2028–2034, aimed at making the bloc more agile in a “crisis-prone” world.

The budget is reshaped around three pillars:

• €865 billion for agriculture, fisheries, cohesion, and social policy

• €410 billion for competitiveness, research and innovation

• €200 billion for foreign policy and aid

Notably, von der Leyen is slashing traditional farm and cohesion funds—long a cash cow for southern and eastern countries—and redirecting money toward strategic priorities like climate, tech and defence.

Expect fierce pushback from countries reliant on EU cash to keep their lard-arse dictator’s mansions furnished (Hungary) or appease farmers (France).

There’s also a new €100 billion fund earmarked just for testing out American/European weapons somewhere we aren’t legally bound to put troops on the ground Ukraine, plus a €400 billion crisis loan mechanism that activates only in emergencies i.e. someone in mainland Europe is made to reply to an email in August.

To pay for all this, Brussels wants fresh EU-wide taxes on e-waste, tobacco (more on that later) and large corporate revenues—though approval is politically uphill.

Von der Leyen also insists on “rule of law” conditionality, a direct jab at the aforementioned Hungary.

She’s also collapsing the current 52 EU programmes into just 16 and loosening restrictions so funds can shift rapidly in response to future shocks.

The proposal now heads into a bitter fight with EU states and parliamentarians, all looking to claw back cash for their own priorities.

Swedish startup Lovable becomes a unicorn with $200M Series A just 8 months after launch

Lovable has become Europe’s latest unicorn just eight months after launching, closing a $200 million Series A led by Accel at a $1.8 billion valuation.

And no, they’re not a Lovehoney.co.uk competitor or some weird DTC sex doll startup.

They’re a Stockholm-based AI startup that has built a “vibe coding” platform, letting users create websites and apps using plain English prompts.

So far, it’s caught fire: over 2.3 million active users, 180,000 paying subscribers, and $75 million in ARR in under a year, all with just 45 full-time employees.

The tool is especially popular with non-technical users who want to prototype ideas before handing them off to developers.

In total, users have created more than 10 million projects on the platform, and the CEO claims one ed-tech client in Brazil made $3 million in 48 hours using the platform.

But Lovable’s ambitions go far beyond prototyping—it’s aiming to power full production-grade apps and even entire businesses.

Commendable ambition it must be said, but these supposedly “Ai-first” companies can be risky business.

As we wrote about not too long ago, UK-based AI startup Builders.AI had to file bankruptcy in the UK, US and India after revelations that its core app-building offering was using a different type of AI: Advanced Indians.

It didn’t help that they also owed Microsoft over $100 billion.

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Meme of the Week

Affair of the Week

Never mind getting HR involved. Let’s talk about getting involved with HR.

The married CEO of data analytics company Astronomer was snapped by the kiss-cam at a Coldplay concert cozying up to the (also married) Head of HR, creating an ocean of memes as a result.

Their respective partners are understandably shocked, and our sources indicate that they won’t be leaving them for being caught cheating, but rather for being caught watching Coldplay.

That’s all for today.

We’ll be back, bigger and better, next week.

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