Thursday 18 June 2026

[1] MUUUURICAAA, FU*K YEA! (Bald Eagle noises)

DNF reported on the UFC event held at the White House on Monday. We now have further details to discuss. The event was held in celebration of Trump’s 80th and America’s 250th birthdays and was the epitome of what the Trump voter base loves. That said, it was sad to see the White House associate with such absurdities.

Monster Energy was providing supporters of the event with free energy drinks. The caffeine went straight to the patrons’ heads, as multiple brawls broke out (next to, not inside) the octagon, with heavyweight UFC fans rolling around punching each other on the White House lawn.

During the build-up to the fights, Nitro Circus held a display of dirt bikes doing flips and tricks. Loud engine revving and high-school dropouts risking their lives set the scene for what was to come.

Throughout the event, Trump’s commemorative coin was heavily advertised. Trump and his family have made an estimated $2 billion from cryptocurrency-affiliated deals, most of which were scams (allegedly…). It seems that the Don has moved from crypto coins to golden coins.

While DNF appreciates a rotation out of crypto into commodities, this is not exactly what we have in mind.

During the national anthem, fighter jets rerouted from Tehran to fly over the White House, adding more engine noise to an already ear-drum-splitting event. At 80 years old, Trump probably heard only half of the commotion.

Headline sponsors included Crypto.com, RAM Trucks and Bud Light. No comment.

During Josh Hokit’s post-fight interview, he noted, “Shoutout to Trump for having the balls to put something like this on. YEAAA.” He then made a blasphemous remark and stated that Barack Obama’s wife is a man.

Monster Energy, dirt bikes, fighter jets, cryptocurrency, brawling, UFC, gold coins, big trucks, blasphemy, conspiracy theories and general chaos - PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.

[2] DNF has also been reporting on the Murdoch family, who settled on Lachlan Murdoch as the heir to the kingdom. Lachlan has been working wonders on Fox Corporation’s stock price over the last two years. Now, with one deal, he is writing a shocking plot twist into the investment narrative.

Fox agreed this week to buy streaming service Roku Inc. for an enterprise value of $22 billion. The enlarged company will take the third position in US television by share of viewing, largely by joining the free, ad-supported (so not free, if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product) Tubi, which Fox bought in 2020. The sudden acceleration into streaming marks a radical departure for Fox.

The bet here is simple: couch potatoes have only so much appetite to scroll through different interfaces, and Fox content might find new eyeballs through Roku. In other words, corporations are willing to bet $22 billion on their customers’ being so lazy that they won’t click the right arrow button on a remote.

Monthly TV Viewership in the US, March 2026

Source: Bloomberg

[3] The New York Times published the results of a poll that attempts to rank the 30 best living American songwriters. More than 25,000 ballots were cast, with each voter writing up to 10 names.

The top 10 are:

1. Bob Dylan

2. Paul Simon

3. Bruce Springsteen

4. Carole King

5. Billy Joel

6. Stevie Wonder

7. Taylor Swift

8. Dolly Parton

9. James Taylor

10. Willie Nelson

DNF is partial to rap, so we will mention that Kendrick Lamar took position 17, Eminem 31 and Jay-Z 38. What do you think?

[4] Dania Thafer, director of the Gulf International think tank, paints a grim picture of the US-Iran nuclear negotiations that are currently underway.

“When it comes to nuclear negotiations, we are back at the pre-war stage, but with the US leverage removed.”

We tend to agree - the war has simply proved to the Iranian regime that the US cannot militarily overpower them, while simultaneously serving as proof that their control over the Strait of Hormuz is a stunning bargaining chip.

“Pandora’s box has already been opened, everything has been tested, and Iran feels it doesn’t have much more to lose or fear. The worst has already happened, from an Iranian perspective, and they have survived it.”

The US has shown the stick, and it did not work. What might work, however, is the carrot. The Iranian economy is flimsy, and the regime (whoever they are at this point) will be keen to avoid another January-like uprising. America’s negotiating tactic, therefore, has become money. This is ironic, considering the end of the war (if, and this is a big if, this is the end of the war) will have caused a stronger, richer Iranian economy, more Iranian negotiating leverage and more US foreign aid spending.

We simply cannot wait for the Trump administration’s commentary on the deal. We expect something along the lines of:

(DNF has figured out how to add a quote block, fancy no?)

What they have actually achieved is a stronger, more radicalized Iran with a greater disdain for the West, which is exactly why no previous administration invaded the country.

Furthermore, how can we expect the Iranian regime to assume that the US is negotiating in good faith if the same administration ripped up the Obama-negotiated deal and proceeded to initiate a war against them? Wouldn’t that make them more interested in developing a nuclear weapon and less interested in signing, what seems to be, exactly the same (probably considerably worse for the US) deal?

What are we missing here?

[5] Data centers are a problem. We will continue to say this until the chickens come home to roost, and they will. In 2025, 92% of the US GDP growth came from data center investment. If you remove AI infrastructure, the US economy grew only 0.1% last year.

Over the past six years, more money has flowed into data center build-outs than the Marshall Plan (the effort to rebuild Europe after WW2), the Manhattan Project (Oppenheimer and co.’s successful development of the first nuclear bomb), the entire Apollo program (including landing the first people on the moon) and the International Space Station - combined.

[6] Former South African President Jacob Zuma is appealing to the Constitutional Court to overrule the High Court’s ruling that he must repay, with interest, R28.9 million in legal fees. The funds were provided by the state, and Zuma must now repay the amount from his personal coffers.

His defense is that he was a victim of the state’s illegal decision to provide him with the funds. He continued that serving the ruling would result in “potential injustice… of the utmost severity”.

Fresh coming from you, Jacob, but well done for using big words such as “potential”, “utmost” and “the”.

[7] More wars, more negotiations. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, met Trump at the G7 summit in France (we should have mentioned yesterday that the G7 invites other leaders to the summit as well, but it is not an open house. Putin, Xi and Kim are having a separate, much cooler party with less diplomatic niceties and more rocket fuel, we think). Trump said that “Russia should make a deal” another wonderfully acute observation.

Privately, Macron (France) was overheard telling Zelensky (Ukraine) that his discussion with Trump regarding Ukraine has been “difficult” (there’s an example of the aforementioned niceties). The European leaders have urged America to host peace talks. Last time Zelensky was in the Oval Office, Trump resorted to ad hominem attacks and Vance criticized his outfit, saying that he should wear a suit.

Don’t believe us? Watch the video here.

[8] America is running out of bullets. “I hereby find that conditions exist which may pose a direct threat to the national defense or its preparedness programs”, Trump wrote in a memo to Hegseth.

Trump is invoking a cold-war era law, the Defense Production Act, which allows the Pentagon’s contractors to “work together in a way that would normally be problematic in an open and competitive market sense”.

In laymen’s terms: the President is allowing defense contractors to act in an anti-competitive manner.

In response, General Motors, which manufactures Chevrolet, GMC, Cadillac and Buick cars, announced a partnership deal with Lockheed Martin, an arms firm, to boost weapons manufacturing in America. Lockheed will invest $9 billion and GM a further $7 billion.

Both Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have recently invested heavily in the defense sector.

[9] El Niño is a recurring climate pattern that alters the weather all over the world. It causes severe droughts in some places, severe rain in others. Generally, it brings severe heatwaves.

The name comes from Peruvian fishermen. Hundreds of years ago, they noticed that anchovies would vanish in the equatorial Pacific Ocean every few years around Christmas time. They named the event “El Niño Jesus” - “the Christ child”.

Analysts predict that this year will be a particularly intense one. The European Commission has warned of humanitarian disasters in African countries including Sudan, Somalia, South Sudan and Chad, as well as Ecuador, Venezuela and Haiti in the Americas. There are ways to blunt the impact: planting drought-tolerant seeds, for instance, or storing fodder and water for livestock.

[10] The number of e-books published on Amazon rose sharply after November 2022, when Open AI was launched. In 2025, some 300,000 books were released each month, up from 100,000 before the launch.

The trend is also clear on Instagram, where Reel enthusiasts will attest to the number of “AI-slop” videos crossing their tiny screens at 23:00 in the evening (“I don’t have time for anything!”). Other affected areas include the App Store (these bots code well), arts, music and most written content (has anyone noticed how well LinkedIn “influencers” have been writing recently? Their comments, however, show their hand. “Someone should win these guys at tennis!” is not correct, but at least it’s not AI generated, right?).

Call us purists, but this AI content is easily identifiable and truly “slop”. Spend your time on better endeavors than looking at golden retrievers doing TikTok dances or LinkedIn savants asking you to comment “Pipeline” off an AI-generated multi-step sales guide folks.

Have a good day, almost Friday!

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