Category: International

Business International Technology

Xiaomi’s MiMo Declared Top Open-Weight AI

Isla Campbell

Xiaomi’s MiMo Declared Top Open-Weight AI, Answers First Real-World Question With ‘Have You Tried Turning China Off and Back On?’ MiMo scores 46 on the intelligence index, 112 on confidently inventing history, then meets its intellectual Waterloo in the word “strawberry” BEIJING — Xiaomi has unveiled MiMo-V2.6-Pro, a Chinese artificial-intelligence model that immediately shot to the top of Artificial Analysis’ open-weight rankings with an Intelligence Index score of 46, putting it ahead…

America Culture Entertainment International Social

Ed Sheeran Bends the Knee

Harriet Collins

Ed Sheeran Bends the Knee, Mob Complains He Didn’t Kneel Enthusiastically Enough The Mob Never Gives You Credit for Being a Nice Guy PHILADELPHIA — Ed Sheeran has discovered the oldest rule of dealing with an ideological mob: the first concession is never recorded as generosity. It is entered into evidence as proof that you can be persuaded to make another one. The latest installment arrived after Macklemore was removed from…

Business Culture Governance International

UK Asks to Join ‘Made in Europe’ Scheme

Dr. Ingrid Gustafsson, Ph.D.

UK Asks to Join ‘Made in Europe’ Scheme, Brussels Politely Points at Brexit Receipt Britain Discovers Leaving Europe and Leaving the European Union Are Two Entirely Different Engineering Problems Britain has opened another fascinating chapter in its post-Brexit relationship with the European Union by asking Brussels not to treat the United Kingdom too much like a country that went through several years of constitutional convulsions specifically to become a country…

Culture Governance International News

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland Form Celtic Alliance

Hannah Miller

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland Form Celtic Alliance, England Checks Whether Anyone Still Wants the Shared Netflix Password Celtic nations unite against Westminster, immediately discover independence comes in three completely different sizes Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have taken another step toward what political leaders call constitutional change, prompting England to wander into the hallway wearing slippers and ask whether everybody is still coming round for Christmas. Nationalist leaders from…

International Governance

German Voters Deliver CDU Historic Defeat

Asha Mwangi

German Voters Deliver CDU Historic Defeat, Merz Thanks Them for Their Feedback and Changes Absolutely Nothing Chancellor Confirms Strong Electoral Message Successfully Received, Read and Sent Directly to Spam German voters delivered Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union an extraordinarily unpleasant customer-satisfaction survey on Sunday, and the chancellor responded with the traditional reassurance of senior management everywhere: thank you for bringing this to our attention, we intend to continue exactly…

Technology Business International

Xiaomi’s MiMo Declared World-Class AI

Alan Nafzger

Xiaomi’s MiMo Declared World-Class AI, Immediately Identifies France as a Vegetable New Chinese model conquers benchmarks, million-token context windows and possibly the produce aisle Xiaomi has unveiled MiMo-V2.6-Pro, a Chinese open-weight artificial-intelligence model that has climbed to the top of Artificial Analysis‘ open-weight rankings, scoring 46 on its Intelligence Index and surpassing several well-known rivals, according to VentureBeat. Naturally, humanity responded to this remarkable engineering achievement by asking the only question that…

America International News

Trump Secures “Permanent” Greenland Security

Harper Thames

Trump Secures “Permanent” Greenland Security Deal While Real-Estate Department Mourns the Absence of a Closing Denmark keeps the island, Greenland keeps self-determination, America gets expanded security rights, and the world discovers that international diplomacy has apparently invented the geopolitical timeshare President Donald Trump announced that the United States, Denmark and Greenland have reached an agreement granting Washington permanent security rights on the island, capping months of will-he-won’t-he international drama with…

America International Political

Donald Trump Shoots the Messenger

Bethan Morgan

Trump Bans the Press: The King Shoots the Messenger Again From a sofa in London we watch Washington rediscover the oldest trick in politics: sack the courier, keep the crisis WASHINGTON — For most of human history, rulers confronted bad news using a simple communications strategy. They killed the person who brought it. It was crude. It was violent. It was *terrible for staff retention*. Fortunately, civilisation has progressed. The modern…

America Culture International

Houthis Target Saudi Capital

AMW

Houthis Target Saudi Capital, Google Maps Introduces Exciting New Route: ‘Avoid Ballistic Missiles’ Riyadh Residents Receive Ballistic Missile Air-Raid Alerts, Immediately Regret Ever Clicking ‘Allow Notifications’ Residents of Riyadh discovered this weekend that the worst possible consequence of clicking “Allow Notifications” is apparently not receiving seventeen promotional messages from a shawarma restaurant. It is discovering that your government has something considerably more urgent to discuss. Saudi authorities issued danger alerts…

Technology Business Culture International

Anthropic Warns AI Could Control Civilisation

Bethan Morgan

Anthropic Warns AI Could Control Civilisation; China Downloads It, Britain Forms a Committee Washington Panics, Beijing Races, Westminster Schedules a Consultation The international campaign to persuade China that artificial intelligence is extraordinarily powerful, potentially civilisation-altering and perhaps decisive in determining which nations dominate the twenty-first century has hit an unexpected snag. Chinese researchers keep responding, “You had us at extraordinarily powerful.” Britain, meanwhile, has asked for the minutes to be…

America Culture Education International News

Ed Sheeran Boycott Survey

AMW

Ed Sheeran Boycott Survey Finds 12% Can Locate Gaza, 100% Can Locate the Outrage Button 92% of Ed Sheeran Boycotters Attended University, Researchers Still Searching for Evidence It Took LONDON — An entirely unscientific satirical survey of people threatening to boycott Ed Sheeran has produced the most alarming discovery in modern political geography: apparently the human thumb can locate the outrage button considerably faster than the human brain can locate the country being…

Culture International Social

CHOSEN BRICK Spyware

Tinsel Vandergraph

CHOSEN BRICK Spyware: Iran’s Bricks Finally Went Digital Why CHOSEN BRICK Proves Tehran’s Secret Police Finally Discovered Remote Work Iranian intelligence has allegedly entered the exciting world of digital transformation, after Western intelligence agencies warned that state-linked cyber operators are using malware known as CHOSEN BRICK against dissidents, activists and journalists abroad. The warning was issued by cybersecurity and intelligence agencies in the United States, United Kingdom and Netherlands. Britain’s National…

International

New Russian Missile Can Travel 500 Miles and Weave

Carys Evans

New Russian Missile Can Travel 500 Miles and Weave Near Target, Apparently Trained on Moscow Taxi Drivers Moscow’s reported 500-mile weapon may swerve, merge and change lanes without signaling near its target, while Europe discovers that defending civilization has become largely a question of buying interceptors in bulk MOSCOW — Russia is reportedly preparing final tests of a new ballistic missile capable of traveling approximately 800 kilometers, or 500 miles,…

Culture History International Social

7th Royal Sussex Stopped Panzers With Rifles

Alan Nafzger

7th Royal Sussex Sent to France to Build Airfields, Asked to Stop Panzers With Rifles and a Positive Attitude Brave 7th Royal Sussex Territorials Discover the British Army’s 1940 Definition of Light Duties Meant Facing the 1st Panzer Division at Amiens With Whatever Was in the Cupboard Military historians have confirmed that the 7th Royal Sussex arrived in France in 1940 under circumstances demonstrating that Britain’s greatest wartime resource was…

Culture Environment International Social Tourism

UN Corrects 457-Year-Old Map

Alan Nafzger

UN Corrects 457-Year-Old Map While Humanity Politely Waits for Everything Else General Assembly votes 164-1 to make Africa geographically accurate, raising hopes that war, famine and nuclear proliferation can eventually be addressed once Greenland is returned to regulation size Humanity received encouraging news this week after the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly backed the Equal Earth map projection, demonstrating that an organization routinely confronted with wars, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, mass…

Business Culture Food International News

The Brussels Café

Astrid Holgersson

The Brussels Café: Where the Government Writes the Menu, Regulates the Stove, and Then Investigates Why Dinner Costs More Europe’s agricultural policy finally achieves what decades of Michelin inspectors never could: a restaurant where the customer, the chef, and the vegetables are all technically under investigation The European agricultural model increasingly resembles a restaurant where the government writes the menu, limits the ingredients, regulates the stove, taxes the chef, and…

Culture International News Social

Britain Faces Dangerous Shortage of Police Spies

Alan Nafzger

Britain Faces Dangerous Shortage of Police Spies, Leaving Citizens Free to Speak for Several Minutes at a Time British people reportedly roaming streets completely unspied upon, raising terrifying possibility somebody may express an opinion without government supervision Britain has been plunged into an unprecedented civil liberties emergency after police appeared to suffer an intelligence failure surrounding the weekend’s anti-migrant demonstrations, raising the horrifying possibility that somewhere in the United Kingdom a citizen…

America International

America’s Burning Man

Mei Lin Chen

Burning Man Officially Becomes Burning Middle-Aged Man America’s Great Counterculture Experiment Discovers Its Participants Have 401(k)s Burning Man, the annual celebration in which Americans flee civilization so they can reconstruct civilization in Nevada with worse plumbing, appears to be undergoing the one transformation no amount of psychedelics can prevent: Everybody got older. The New York Post recently declared the festival a “wrinkled sausage fest”, perhaps the first demographic analysis to sound…

America International

Iran Fires Missiles at Two U.S. Warships

Fiona MacLeod

Iran Fires Missiles at Two U.S. Warships, Appears Genuinely Surprised When Three Oil Tankers Develop Immediate Maintenance Problems U.S. strikes Iranian shadow-fleet vessels as Revolutionary Guard learns “shadow” is an accounting term, not Klingon cloaking technology Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps received an unexpected lesson Saturday in the obscure military principle known as cause and effect, after launching ballistic missiles toward two U.S. Navy warships and subsequently discovering that three…

Culture History International Tourism

Bayeux Tapestry Monetising Losing to France

Alan Nafzger

Bayeux Tapestry Arrives in Britain, Public Queues Nine Hours to Review Country’s 1066 Performance British Museum turns Norman conquest into hottest ticket in London, finally monetising losing to France LONDON. The Bayeux Tapestry has gone on public display in Britain for the first time, allowing thousands of Britons to queue enthusiastically for the opportunity to inspect documentary evidence that their ancestors lost badly in 1066. Demand has been extraordinary. Tens…

Culture International Technology

Eighth-Grade Dropout’s $245 Million Bitcoin Theft

Yasmina Khan

Eighth-Grade Dropout’s $245 Million Bitcoin Theft Puts Every MBA Program to Shame A Singapore school dropout allegedly needed no diploma, no investment bank and no advanced mathematics to pull off the biggest Bitcoin theft prosecutors have ever charged as racketeering, merely somebody willing to read him a six-digit code The American business school establishment was thrown into a quiet identity crisis this week after 22-year-old Malone Lam, an eighth-grade dropout…

Governance International News

Britain Now a Nuclear-Armed Islamic Republic

Alan Nafzger

Netanyahu Calls Britain a Nuclear-Armed Islamic Republic, British Government Relieved Someone Still Thinks Trident Works Andy Burnham objects after the Israeli prime minister rebrands Britain before Labour can finish the consultation LONDON — Benjamin Netanyahu has described Britain as “the Islamic republic of Britain” and “the first Islamic republic to get a nuclear weapon,” according to The Guardian, prompting Pakistan to file an emergency complaint for theft of national achievements. Britain Receives…

Culture Governance International Social

Iceland EU Referendum Rejects Brussels

Vivienne Pratfall

Iceland EU Referendum Rejects Brussels for Actual Aeroplanes Brussels Promised Strategic Protection, but the Iceland EU Referendum Found Reykjavík Already Has NATO, America and a Coast Guard REYKJAVÍK, ICELAND — Iceland has declined to restart negotiations for European Union membership, dealing a humiliating setback to Brussels’ plan to become a global defence hegemon just as soon as France, Germany and Luxembourg agree on the font. The referendum was not a vote…

Culture Governance International News Tourism

Masked Protesters Shut Dover

Yasmina Khan

Masked Protesters Shut Dover, Westminster Horrified Citizens Have Located the Border Labour Says the Dover Border Crisis Is Improving Because Britain Is Now Losing Control More Efficiently DOVER, ENGLAND — Britain’s long-running experiment in managing illegal immigration through press releases, ministerial adjectives and very expensive conversations with France encountered an unexpected complication Saturday: several hundred people apparently decided to visit the border themselves. Masked demonstrators dressed in black blocked roads leading…

America International News

Special Relationship Suddenly Needs a Lawyer

Alan Nafzger

US Military Attaché Whisked Out of London After Child-Porn Allegations, Special Relationship Suddenly Needs a Lawyer Diplomatic Immunity Apparently Upgraded to Diplomatic Same-Day Shipping LONDON — The special relationship between Britain and the United States has survived world wars, presidents, prime ministers, trade disputes and several hundred occasions when Americans tried explaining ice to British bartenders. It may now require something stronger: two lawyers, three international agreements and somebody stationed…

International News Social Technology

China’s AI Regime Security Panic

Alan Nafzger

China’s AI Regime Security Panic Finally Meets Its Match: The Follow-Up Question Beijing wants the world’s smartest AI, provided it never gets curious enough to compare notes China’s AI regime security fears have grown so large that Beijing’s newest national threat is not a cyberweapon, a foreign spy ring, or a hostile currency manipulation scheme. It is a chatbot that asks a second question. Minister of State Security Chen Yixin…

Governance International News

Government War Plans

Siobhan O’Donnell

Every Government Department Ordered to Refresh War Plans; Treasury Asks Whether Surrender Could Be Means-Tested Whitehall updates national defence preparations and discovers several emergency plans still refer to fax machines LONDON — Britain’s government departments have been instructed to rewrite their War Book, the central playbook for how Whitehall would function during a national emergency or wartime disruption, by the end of this year, raising the deeply British possibility that Armageddon…

Business International Technology

China Warnings About AI

Dr. Ingrid Gustafsson, Ph.D.

China Warns AI Could Threaten Communist Party Rule Beijing announces AI danger is Western hysteria, except for the portions currently worrying Beijing China has dismissed Western warnings surrounding artificial intelligence as fear-driven rhetoric while simultaneously providing one of the better demonstrations of why governments become nervous about artificial intelligence. Chinese foreign ministry officials pushed back against arguments that China’s AI development should be constrained. Yet Chen Yixin, China’s state-security minister, has…

Business International Technology

China Dismisses American AI Panic

Hannah Miller

China Dismisses American AI Panic, Notes Silicon Valley Has Predicted the Apocalypse Before Every Funding Round Beijing asks why companies building civilization-ending technology keep accepting investment Chinese officials have rejected American warnings about the dangers of China advancing rapidly in artificial intelligence, raising the uncomfortable possibility that Silicon Valley’s newest product may not be artificial intelligence at all, but artificial urgency. The dispute intensified after Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei argued for…

America International News

Saudi Arabia Asks Trump for Help

Alan Nafzger

Saudi Arabia Asks Trump for Airstrikes, Gets a Limited Warranty Instead Riyadh phones Trump for military help and receives a lot of fine print Saudi Arabia and Trump have just had one of the more instructive phone calls in recent Gulf diplomacy — the kind where one side asks for airstrikes and the other side offers a very detailed apology. Somewhere between the crown prince’s second call to Trump and…