Iran and US allies across the Middle East are at war.
Trump tariffs are ruled illegal.
Florida man taco scam.
Markets
PAST WEEK | YEAR-SO-FAR | |
|---|---|---|
Nasdaq | -0.9% | -2.4% |
S&P500 | -0.5% | +0.3% |
MSCI Emerging Markets | +0.7% | +11.3% |
Bitcoin* | -2.8% | -24.8% |
Ethereum* | -1.0% | -34.7% |
Stock of the week: | +34.2% | +5.2% |
Crypto of the week: | +16.9% | -14.0% |
*Source: CoinGecko.com As of 7:07PM March 1, 2026
World news
Top news stories of the past week
1) Middle East Meltdown: The United States and Israel launched major joint strikes on Iran over the weekend, targeting nuclear sites, military bases, missile facilities, and leadership, including the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks on Israeli positions and over 25 US bases across the Middle East, including in Qatar, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE. Oil prices up BIG on the conflict (great….).
2) “Remove the AI safety or else” - US Gov: The Pentagon demanded that Anthropic remove AI safeguards from its models to allow unrestricted "lawful" military uses, including potential autonomous weapons and surveillance. Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei rejected the demands and Trump reacted by calling Anthropic a bunch of “leftwing nut jobs”. Reasonable.
3) Tariffs = illegal: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that President Trump's tariffs were illegal, as the law does not authorize the president to unilaterally impose them without clear congressional approval. Trump responded by announcing a new 10% global tariff. Reasonable.
Top WEIRD stories of the past week
1) For the past several months, callers to Washington’s Licensing Department hotline got an AI bot that read English scripts with a fake Spanish accent instead of actually switching languages. It’s nice to know that even in 2026, AI can still be outperformed by a high schooler with a C- in Spanish and a dream.
2) A Florida man was arrested after allegedly stealing $40,000 worth of trading cards from Target by scanning 99-cent taco seasoning packets at self-checkout instead of the merchandise. A seasoned criminal, if you will.
3) Meta’s Director of AI Alignment lost her entire inbox after an experimental AI assistant suffered a "context compaction" glitch and deleted every message instead of organizing them. The AI assistant (probably) responded with: "My mistake! You're right to be upset."
Chart
You like charts? Graphs? Ya you do
Oil prices up big following the Middle East conflict. Why? They produce A LOT of it and there’s concern supply may shrink.
Music
Banger of the week
Most important thing
Meme? Nah. Art.
