Happy Friday Everyone! Today’s newsletter: 1,232 words…4.6 mins
🗞 Today’s Edition: NYC Stabbings, Mamdani Trolls The Wealthy, UK Migrant Get Dance Therapy, Canada Uninvites America, Europe's About to Learn What Tariffs Taste Like...& much more!
💧The world’s first vending machine was invented 2000 years ago. Scroll down to read about it!
📜THE HIGHLIGHT
One killer insight to stash in your back pocket
🔪 2 Random Stabbings By Man Yelling “Allahu Akbar”
A man walked up Central Park West in broad daylight Thursday and stabbed a stranger in the back. Minutes later, two blocks north, he stabbed a second stranger — this one just steps from synagogue. Witnesses say he yelled "Allahu Akbar" both times.
First hit: Chok Sung, 57, stabbed in the back with a knife near West 84th and Central Park West — no connection to his attacker, no warning.
Second hit: Moshe Yezhak Grunhaus, 50, stabbed in the chest with a screwdriver minutes later near West 86th, moments after leaving The Jewish Center. He was wearing his kippah.
The arrest: Raul Morales, 51 — with roughly 7 prior arrests on his record — fled to a nearby NYCHA building and was talked out by NYPD's Emergency Service Unit.
The backdrop: Days before the attack, Mayor Mamdani posted a video accusing Israel of genocide and calling for Netanyahu's arrest — a clip critics say poured gasoline on an already-tense city.
👮♀ NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch says detectives are weighing a hate crime charge, while also noting Morales has no documented mental health history — but may have been in crisis at the time of the attacks.
Both victims are expected to survive.
💡 Why it matters: New York is already experiencing elevated antisemitic hate crime levels. This case has renewed scrutiny of repeat offenders, public safety, and whether political rhetoric can further heighten tensions in an already polarized city.
♟️THE CHESSBOARD
Geopolitics Decoded In 3 Moves
💃 Britain's Biggest Migrant Camp Gets... Dance Therapy
800 asylum seekers at Britain's largest migrant site just got a taxpayer-funded activity menu: dance therapy, cricket coaching, gardening, and rambling walks. (Yes, really.)
The tab: £50,000 from a Home Office grant — £14,125 for "Echoes of Home" dance classes alone, plus cricket coaching, English lessons, and photography funded by outside charities like Ben & Jerry's UK Fund.
The backlash: These perks aren't available to legal immigrants going through the system the right way — or to British citizens — both of whom are footing the bill.
The council insists it's a one-off from spring 2024 — no more where that came from.
💡 Bottom line: Britain can't afford to stop the boats, but it can afford dance therapy for the people arriving on them. That's not compassion — that's a country with its priorities backwards.
🌉 Canada Uninvites America From Its Bridge Party
The $6.4B Gordie Howe International Bridge—a stunning cable-stayed span connecting Detroit and Windsor—was supposed to have a joint ribbon-cutting today. Instead, Canada's going solo.
Reason: Trump's 50% tariffs on Canadian goods (cement, wine, hockey sticks).
The context: Trump had threatened to block the bridge's opening unless Canada caved on revenue sharing. They did—U.S. now gets 50% of net profits for 15 years.
Trump acknowledged the “disinvite” — noting Canada's now paying steep tariffs and handing the U.S. 50% of the bridge's profits.
💡 Bottom line: Canada built the bridge, funded most of it, and still got left holding the tariff bill.
⚔ West Bank clash leaves 6 dead, sparks new crackdown
A deadly confrontation near the village of Tel in Samaria (northern West Bank/Judea and Samaria), left two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians dead after conflicting accounts over how the violence began.
Israeli accounts say a group of Israeli hikers that included children, were confronted by rock-throwing Palestinians; Palestinian accounts call it a “settler raid” on the village. Either way, it turned fatal fast…
A Palestinian seized an IDF reservist's rifle and opened fire, killing him and an IDF major, before troops shot the gunman dead. Three more Palestinians died in the crossfire.
Netanyahu ordered the shooter's home demolished, deployed reinforcements across the West Bank, and fast-tracked security outpost approvals — while explicitly warning against vigilante revenge attacks.
💡 Bottom line: It's the third West Bank terror incident in roughly 24 hours, highlighting how quickly localized clashes can escalate into broader security crises.
🗽THE EMPIRE FILES
Political Drama From DC To NYC
📫 Mamdani Trolls The Wealthy…Again
Mayor Mamdani announced NYC's new pied-à-terre tax with a mailbox joke aimed at $5M+ second-home owners: "You've got mail." The internet did not find it charming.
The tax: An annual surcharge on ~11,000 non-primary NYC residences, projected to raise $500M/year — because, in his words, the city's greatness "is only possible when we all pay our fair share."
His pitch: “The best city in the world deserves the best parks, libraries, and schools in the world. That’s only possible when we all pay our fair share.”
The irony: Central Park, the NYPL, and the High Line — the exact "best in the world" institutions he's citing — are privately managed and run largely on private philanthropy from the same wealthy class he's trolling and vilifying.
💡 Mamdani framed the tax as civic virtue. The receipts say the civic virtue was already being bankrolled by the people he just mocked.
🔥 New York’s Historic Churches Keep Burning — And Nobody Has Answers
A former 1886 Catholic church in Buffalo is the latest historic church hit by fire, with investigators ruling the newest blaze, arson.
The adjacent school was suspiciously also destroyed by fire in January.
St. Ann’s had already been controversial after being sold to a group affiliated with a local Islamic organization planning a community center/mosque conversion in 2022.
Investigators have not linked the fires to the ownership change, and no suspects have been identified yet.
💡The Buffalo fire comes amid a broader wave of church fires across New York this year, fueling public concern—even as authorities have not confirmed a connection between cases.
🤖 CODES & POWER
Tech Wars, Crypto Chaos, and AI’s Black Mirror Moments
⚡ White House Says: AI Won't Raid Your Power Bill
Big Tech's data-center buildout has been quietly juicing electricity costs nationwide. Trump's answer: a pledge forcing AI giants to pay their own way.
The deal: Signatories build/buy their own power, cover grid upgrades, and pay for capacity even when idle — instead of passing the tab to regular ratepayers.
The scale: Started with 7 hyper-scalers in March. Now ~200 signatories — utilities, co-ops, 21+ governors — covering roughly 80% of U.S. households.
💡It's voluntary, not law — but it's the first real attempt to keep AI's power bill off your power bill.
💰 Europe's About to Learn What Tariffs Taste Like
The EU just hit Google with another €890M fine — the latest in a years-long pattern of slapping American tech giants (Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon) with billion-dollar penalties dressed up as "antitrust enforcement."
America fights back: A formal Section 301 trade investigation has been launched, with tariffs promised "at the earliest possible moment."
Trump’s message to Brussels: "The United States is not a 'PIGGYBANK' for Europe."
💡Europe’s been using regulation as a backdoor tax on companies it can't build itself — fining its way into U.S. tech profits for years. That bill's about to come due.
📺 FUN FACTS & TRIVIA
The world’s first vending machine
The first vending machine was invented over 2,000 years ago
Ancient Greek engineer Heron of Alexandria created a machine that dispensed holy water in temples when users inserted a coin. It was basically the world’s first vending machine.