Happy Thursday Everyone! Today’s newsletter: 1,129 words…4.3 mins
🗞 Today’s Edition: NYC Flash Floods, NYC’s FIFA Lottery, Space X IPO, Japan’s “Eternal Flame”, Sinaloa Cartel in Africa… & much more!
🧌 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was partly inspired by a real-life experiment. Scroll down to read about it.
📜THE HIGHLIGHT
One killer insight to stash in your back pocket
Scenes of flooding across NYC
🌧 Flash Floods In NYC
New York spent Wednesday night doing an accidental remake of Waterworld.
Flash floods slammed all broughs, but primarily hit Queens and Brooklyn after intense thunderstorms dumped roughly 2+ inches of rain in under an hour in some neighborhoods.
Streets in Jamaica, Bayside, Bushwick, and Rosedale turned into rivers almost instantly.
Cars were swallowed whole.
Subway stations flooded. The F train basically said “absolutely not.”
⚡ The most viral moment: A woman got swept by rushing floodwater near a bus/subway entrance before grabbing onto a handrail like it was the last helicopter out of a disaster movie.
She survived unharmed, but the clip spread across TikTok and X at lightspeed because it looked genuinely terrifying.
🚨 Why this keeps happening: NYC’s infrastructure is built for a time that no longer exists. The city’s aging sewer system, clogged drains, and endless concrete create a perfect recipe for flash flooding whenever the sky decides to unload. Even “moderate” storms now hit like boss battles.
Mayor Mamdani has pushed a $108 million catch-basin upgrade plan, but Wednesday’s chaos showed the scale of the problem.
💡 The bigger picture: This wasn’t Hurricane Sandy-level destruction. No major injuries or deaths reported. But that’s almost the point. NYC is increasingly vulnerable to routine storms turning into mini-disasters.
♟️THE CHESSBOARD
Geopolitics Decoded In 3 Moves
Japan’s historic temple in flames
🕯️Japan's "Eternal Flame" Might Have Burned Down Its Own Temple
A fire destroyed Reikado Hall at Daishō-in this week, wiping out the wooden temple structure that housed Japan’s legendary “Eternal Flame.”
The flame — originally lit in 806 CE by Buddhist monk Kūkai — had burned continuously for more than 1,200 years and even helped ignite the peace flame at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park after the atomic bombing.
💡Bottom line: Priests managed to save the sacred fire before the hall collapsed. Which means the building is gone… but the symbol survived.
🌍 Sinaloa Cartel... Is Now Running Meth Labs in Africa
The Pentagon just dropped a plot twist straight out of Narcos. At a congressional hearing this week, AFRICOM commander Dagvin Anderson said U.S. and allied forces busted 12 drug labs across Africa in the past two years.
11 reportedly had Mexican cartel operatives onsite, including members tied to the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Terror groups get a cut: Sahel jihadists provide protection and transit corridors in exchange for cartel financing — a clean, mutually beneficial arrangement (for them).
A Spanish interdiction supported by U.S. intel netted ~35 tons of cocaine — street value ~$1B — in one of the largest seizures in history.
💡 Bottom line: The War on Drugs just got a third continent. While Washington debates the southern border, Sinaloa is quietly industrializing narco-production 0 miles away — and terrorists are the ones collecting rent.
🇩🇪 Merz Invents a New EU Category... Just for Ukraine
Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz sent EU leaders a letter this week pitching something that doesn't exist yet: "associate EU membership" for Ukraine — a bespoke halfway-house status designed to pull Kyiv inside the tent without triggering the full, brutal accession gauntlet.
Kyiv would get seats at major EU meetings, partial access to budgets and markets, and even security backing under the EU’s mutual-defense clause — but no voting rights yet.
The catch: A "snap-back" clause suspends the status if Ukraine backslides on rule-of-law reforms. Trust, but verify.
💡 Bottom line: Ukraine's official position: full membership only. Slovakia already said no. The Commission is "assessing."
🗽THE EMPIRE FILES
Political Drama From DC To NYC
⚽ NYC’s $50 World Cup Ticket Lottery Hits the Streets
NYC’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani just dropped a rare “actually affordable” win: 1,000 World Cup tickets for $50 each for NYC residents at MetLife Stadium.
The deal includes seven matches (group stage through Round of 16), plus free round-trip buses and strict anti-scalping rules.
Tickets are upper bowl only, but in a tournament where prices are sky-high, it’s still a major access play.
⚡ Entry opens May 25 via lottery and runs until May 30th midnight.
💰Jamie Dimon to NYC's Mayor: "I Don't Care What You Say"
JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon sat across from Mayor Zohran Mamdani at JPMorgan's gleaming new 270 Park Avenue HQ this week — then walked straight to Bloomberg TV and delivered a verdict that wasn't exactly a glowing Yelp review.
“I don’t care what he says. What does he do? I will judge that … because you can talk about morality and ideology all you want, but if things don't get better, you didn't do a good job."
His message: Cities don’t get “divine rights” to stay on top — they have to earn it.
The gift: Dimon reportedly handed Mamdani a book on economic development. (Yes, really.)
⚡The subtext? Wall Street is watching closely, and patience is not unlimited.
🤖 CODES & POWER
Tech Wars, Crypto Chaos, and AI’s Black Mirror Moments
💰🚀 SpaceX Just Opened the Door to a $1.5 Trillion IPO
SpaceX has officially filed its S-1 with the SEC, kicking off what could become the largest IPO in history.
The company plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, with a potential raise of $50–80 billion+ and a valuation topping $1.5 trillion.
Starlink is already pulling in billions, but the filing also shows heavy losses tied to Starship, AI infrastructure, and orbital expansion bets.
⚡Behind it all: Elon Musk keeps majority control through a dual-class structure — meaning Wall Street gets shares, but he keeps the steering wheel.
💵 Microsoft, Anthropic, and the Next Chip War Frontline
Anthropic is reportedly in early talks with Microsoft to rent server capacity powered by Microsoft’s in-house Maia 200 AI chips, aimed at scaling inference for Claude models.
The idea: more compute for surging AI demand, less reliance on Nvidia GPUs, and a deeper shift toward custom silicon in the AI arms race.
⚡ It builds on Microsoft’s already massive partnership stack with Anthropic, including billions in investment.
📺 FUN FACTS & TRIVIA
The “Real” Frankenstein
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was partly inspired by a real-life electrical experiment. In 1803, Giovanni Aldini publicly zapped the corpse of an executed criminal with electricity, making the jaw move and one eye open — witnessed by horrified crowds.
These experiments helped inspire Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein.