Happy Wednesday Everyone! Today’s newsletter: 1,164 words…4.4 mins
🗞 Today’s Edition: Ken Griffin vs Mamdani, Ted Turner Dies, Meloni Got Deepfaked, China Asks Refiners To Ignore US Sanctions, Vivek Ramaswamy Wins, Space X + Anthropic Team Up...& much more!
👢 Did you know medieval fashion excess called for the fashion police? Scroll down to read about it!
📜THE HIGHLIGHT
One killer insight to stash in your back pocket
🏙️ Mamdani Filmed Outside a Billionaire's Door — So the Billionaire Took His Jobs to Miami
Ken Griffin (Citadel CEO, net worth: obscene) said “it took a moment to digest what I was watching.”
That's how he knew it was real: NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani — democratic socialist, 4 months into the job — standing outside Griffin's $238 million penthouse on Tax Day, camera rolling, announcing a new surcharge on luxury pieds-à-terre. Subtle as a sledgehammer. Intentionally.
The tax itself targets luxury properties over $5M where the owner doesn't actually live in NYC — projected to pull in $500M+ annually for the city.
What the mayor of New York has made clear to my partners, and principally my New York partners, is that we need to double down on our bet in Miami.
⚔ Griffin’s response (first time, publicly): Speaking on CNBC, the Citadel boss didn’t hold back.
⚠️ Safety: Said the video “put me in harm’s way,” referencing the 2024 killing of CEO Brian Thompson
🎯 Personal jab: Called it “poor taste” to single him out, making him a “political puppet.”
💸 The tax: “Discriminates against a narrow group” (read: the 0.1%) who contribute 45% of the city’s taxes.
🪢 The twist: Griffin signaled a power move—more jobs going to Miami, not NYC. Citadel is expanding its footprint there, while its massive $6B Park Ave project is now “under debate” — in “direct response to his [Mamdani] posting of the video.”
💬 City Hall responds: Mamdani’s office pushed back, saying the mayor “wants all New Yorkers to succeed,” including business leaders like Griffin—but argued the tax system is “fundamentally broken.”
🗣 Reactions on X and in the media framed it as a flashpoint for NYC's economic future versus equity goals, with some calling the video "public shaming" and others defending the tax as necessary reform.
💡 Bottom line: Griffin has not canceled the NYC project outright just yet, but the Miami expansion signals a clear pivot.
♟️THE CHESSBOARD
Geopolitics Decoded In 3 Moves
🇨🇳 China Calls Washington’s Bluff
China just dropped its first-ever “blocking order”—telling domestic firms to ignore U.S. sanctions on five Chinese refiners tied to Iranian oil.
The trigger: United States has been targeting China’s “teapot” refiners (incl. Hengli Petrochemical), accusing them of funding Iran via discounted crude + shadow fleet shipping.
Beijing’s move: Says U.S. sanctions are illegal overreach—and now firms that comply with Washington could get punished in China.
The trapped middle: Foreign banks, shippers, and insurers must now choose — follow U.S. rules and lose China, or follow China's order and lose dollar access
💡 The timing: This drops a week before a planned Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing.
🤖 Italy's PM Got Deepfaked — So She Posted It Herself
Someone made AI-generated lingerie photos of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and pushed them as real. Her response: repost them personally, slap a red "FALSE" banner across the image, and add — "whoever created them has also improved me quite a bit."
The sharper line: "I can defend myself. Many others cannot" — turning personal humiliation into a platform warning on nefarious uses of AI.
The pattern: This isn't her first deepfake rodeo — similar images hit Italian porn sites in 2025.
💡 Bottom line: Meloni just wrote the playbook for fighting deepfakes: own the moment before it owns you.
🤝 Israel Deployed the Iron Dome to the UAE — And Nobody's Hiding It Anymore
Four years after the Abraham Accords, the Israel-UAE alliance just stepped out of the shadows. Israel deployed an Iron Dome battery — with troops — to the UAE during the recent Iran conflict. First time ever on Arab soil.
Now both sides are openly calling it an "operational partnership on the ground."
What's been quietly built: Joint drones, intelligence sharing, integrated air defense, and $3B+ in bilateral trade.
💡 Bottom line: Reports say the UAE is now Israel’s closest Arab partner.
🗽THE EMPIRE FILES
Political Drama From DC To NYC
Ted Turner
🕯 Media Titan Gone: Ted Turner Dies at 87
Ted Turner—the man who reinvented news—has died at 87. He passed peacefully at home in Florida surrounded by family. He had been living with Lewy body dementia, diagnosed in 2018.
The legacy:
📺 Launched CNN, TNT, TBS and Cartoon Network — and the entire concept of the 24/7 news cycle
🏆 Owned Atlanta Braves (1995 World Series)
🌍 Donated $1B to the UN, championed conservation
💡 Turner didn’t just cover the news—he changed how the world consumes it.
🗳 Midwest Primaries Set the Board
Ohio and Indiana held primary elections on May 5, 2026. Here are the key results:
Ohio:
🟥 Vivek Ramaswamy won the Republican Governor primary (82.5%) → faces Democrat Amy Acton in November.
🟦Sherrod Brown won the Democrat Senate primary (89.5%) → faces Republican Jon Husted.
Indiana:
🟥 Republican House incumbents mostly held their seats.
🟥 Republican State Senate = MAGA purge — Trump-backed challengers knocked out 5–6 Republican incumbents who'd defied a Trump-supported redistricting plan.
💡Two comebacks, one purge — and November hasn't even started.
🤖 CODES & POWER
Tech Wars, Crypto Chaos, and AI’s Black Mirror Moments
🤑 Anthropic Just Rented Elon's Brain — All of It
In the AI arms race, compute is everything — and Anthropic just secured a massive supply from an unlikely landlord.
Anthropic will use the entire capacity of SpaceX/xAI's Colossus 1 supercomputer in Memphis: 220,000+ NVIDIA GPUs, 300+ megawatts of power, available within the month.
The strange bedfellows factor: Elon Musk's infrastructure is now powering Claude — OpenAI's most serious rival.
⚡ The moonshot: Both companies want to build gigawatts of orbital AI compute. In space.
🥸 A 12-Year-Old Drew a Mustache and Fooled an AI Age Detector
Britain's Online Safety Act mandated age verification on adult platforms. Kids responded with eyebrow pencils.
A UK survey found 32% of children bypassed age checks in the past 2 months — fake birthdays, VPNs, parents' accounts.
But the winner is a 12-year-old who drew facial hair and got verified as 15.
⚡If a Sharpie beats your safety system, the system isn't ready.
📺 FUN FACTS & TRIVIA
Medieval Fashion Police
In the 14th-15th centuries, European fashion went wild with ridiculously long, pointed shoes called poulaines (or crakows).
Some toes were so ridiculously long (up to 2 feet!) that people had to stuff them with moss or wool to keep the shape, or tie them to their legs with chains or strings so they could actually walk without tripping.
In 1463, King Edward IV finally cracked down, passing a law limiting shoe points to just 2 inches for anyone below the rank of lord. Medieval fashion police had spoken!