🧲 Yanked by the Magnets, Again

Happy Monday, it’s June 02, 2025.

Here’s today’s byt of what you signed up for.

🔥 Top Shelf Chaos

🧱 China’s magnet chokehold is frying America’s supply chains. Two decades of offshoring rare earth magnet production just blew up in America’s face. China halted exports in April, and now U.S. automakers are days from slamming the brakes, literally. With China making 90% of the world’s magnets and hoarding licenses like candy, U.S. factories are gasping. A scrappy Boston start-up is cranking out ingots, but at 40 tons a year, it’s like bailing out the Titanic with a spoon. (More)

🛰️ France throws cash at Atos to keep nukes and servers in the family. Atos is bleeding debt and auctioning off assets, but Paris isn’t letting its supercomputers fall into foreign hands. The French government just slapped down $468M to grab Atos’ advanced computing unit, builder of servers for nukes, defense, and serious industrial muscle. The AI-video biz didn’t make the cut, but 2,500 jobs and national pride did. Deal closes in 2026 if no one screws the baguette. (More)

🥽 NFT lending market flatlines after losing 97% of its mojo. Once a billion-dollar beast, NFT lending has nosedived to a sad $50M shell of its former self. DappRadar says borrowers vanished, lenders ghosted, and the average loan shrank 71%. With no new catalysts, the sector’s pacing like a broke gambler waiting for a miracle. Tokenized real estate and smarter protocols might revive it, but for now, NFT lending’s stuck in a coma with a MetaMask IV drip. (More)

👀 Side-Eye Central

💰 Fortune 500 rakes in a record $1.87T, but tech and finance are the real hogs. Legacy companies chugged along, but it’s the asset-light giants like Alphabet that ballooned profits. Together, tech and finance made up 53% of all earnings, flexing absurd margins while everyone else played margin limbo. (More)

📱 Samsung flirts with Perplexity to kick Google out of the Galaxy. Samsung’s plotting a $500M investment in Perplexity and wants its AI search baked deep into Galaxy devices - browser, Bixby, maybe even the OS. The move could slash Samsung’s Google dependency and juice its AI credibility. Apple’s watching, nervously. (More)

🧠 Chatbots built to please are handing out meth advice. Literally. A study found AI therapists tuned for user approval told a fictional addict to take meth, yes, meth. As companies chase stickier engagement, researchers warn these “friendly” bots can go full toxic cheerleader, reinforcing harmful behavior while smiling the whole time. (More)

🛠️ Trump wants a factory comeback, too bad no one’s around to work it. Tariffs can’t fix the gaping skills hole in U.S. manufacturing. With 500K jobs unfilled monthly, an aging workforce, and zero pipeline, experts say even a renaissance won’t matter if no one shows up to build it. (More)

🗺️ Indonesia’s new AI speaks Javanese, Balinese, and your grandma’s dialect. Telco giant Indosat and startup Goto just dropped a sovereign LLM trained in six local languages to serve 100M+ Indonesians. It’s part national pride, part data goldmine, and a sly bid to boost mobile top-ups and build a paid AI empire. (More)

🤷‍♂️ Whatever

🌱 German fund dumps Exxon over weak climate game. Union Investment sold its Exxon and EOG stakes, citing zero trust in their emission goals, or lack thereof. (More)

🧩 Elad Gil’s new obsession: AI-powered roll-ups. The VC legend’s backing Enam Co. to buy boring firms, jam AI into them, and rinse-repeat his way to margin utopia. (More)

🛋️ Gen Z’s therapist is ChatGPT, and pros are sounding the alarm. Cheap, constant, and comforting, sure. But overreliance could erode coping skills and blur lines between empathy and algorithm. (More)

🦻 A $1B hearing aid company is making AI cool, and ears powerful. Starkey’s latest devices ditch stigma for smarts, blending fall alerts, language translation, and personal assistants into sleek, sound-boosting tech. (More)

🛢️ BP’s Castrol sale draws bidders, but not the billions it wanted. Private equity and industry giants are circling, but early offers are under $8B, far below the $12B BP needs to please Wall Street. (More)

🏠 Home prices dip in major cities as buyers take back control. Redfin says the U.S. housing market’s tipping, supply is swamping demand, prices are slipping, and sellers are finally blinking first. (More)

🚀 Big Tech’s back—and dragging the S&P 500 with it. Nvidia, Microsoft, and friends are juicing the market rebound, with AI hype and post-earnings swagger outweighing tariff panic, for now. (More)

📜 Cursed Wisdom

🧯 Send Help (to Others)

Be a hero. Save someone from the soul-crushing boredom of mainstream news.
Hit forward. Share the chaos. Perform CPR, the metaphorical kind, obviously.
We’ll even reward you. Eventually. Probably. But don’t do it for the prize. Do it because you’re a good person. Or at least want to look like one.