Artist Alley location update! 🎨 We've updated our Block A lineup map for Animaga Melbourne 2026. Make sure to check the revised booth numbers for AA–A17 before building your haul list: AA | Entransing Art | @entransing A01 | lost.misery | @Lostmisery A02 | street culture A03 | Yoshie | @yoshie2814 A04 | Zerotabi | @zerotabi1210 A05 | Leonie | @Leonie2814 A06 | ACGN print A07 | Batterylip | @batteryli A08 | Namie | @nambarimasu A09 | FM.Moyu A10 | AshmooN | @AshmooN A11 | FairyFluffy A12 | Loveliness Studio A13 | gold7handmade A14 | juju artstudio A15 | OtomeKuma A16 | Philip Sue Art | @philipsueart A17 | Feily Fragrances 📢 (Keep an eye out for another quick update regarding Wolfychu's merch booth location coming soon!) Who are you visiting first? Drop your picks below! 👇 #Animaga2026# #AnimagaMelbourne# #ArtistAlley#

Get those shopping lists ready, our Animaga Melbourne 2026 Artist Alley reveals are officially starting! 🎨✨ So many incredible artists are bringing their best prints, merch, and handmade goods to MCEC this August. We're kicking things off with the stacked lineup heading to Block A: AA | Wolfychu | @wolfychuuu A01 | lost.misery | @Lostmisery1 A02 | street culture A03 | Yoshie | @yoshie263 A04 | Zerotabi | @zerotabi1210 A05 | Leonie | @Leonie2814 A06 | ACGN print A07 | Batterylip | @batteryli A08 | Namie | @nambarimasu A09 | FM.Moyu | @rr_uncler A10 | AshmooN | @_AshmooN_ A11 | FairyFluffy A12 | Loveliness Studio A13 | gold7handmade A14 | juju artstudio A15 | OtomeKuma A16 | Philip Sue Art A17 | Feily fragrances Who are you visiting first? Tag your friends and plan your route for MCEC! #Animaga2026# #AnimagaMelbourne#

This is an impressive newspaper interview by @WilliamClouston, the SDP's candidate in Clacton. William and I would probably disagree on some of the economics, but on everything else he is spot on. Intelligent, sober, grown-up politics. Why would you be a good MP to the people of Clacton? The Social Democratic Party (SDP), is the only national political party with a developed policy platform standing against Reform in Clacton. We’re the party of the patriotic state, which is exactly what Clacton’s electorate demands: we support strong control of the borders and national pride, while also believing in a robust government that nationalises utilities, invests in infrastructure, and brings industry back to Britain. Whereas Reform lacks political direction, we are crystal clear on our plans for government and want to fix the long-term, structural challenges facing our country: migration, under-investment, a degraded public realm, and deindustrialisation. What are the main issues Clacton faces? The caricature we see of Clacton in the press is completely inaccurate – both in terms of the idea of it being economically destitute or socially atomised, and in terms of the idea of there being just one “Clacton”. Clacton-on-Sea is the biggest town in the constituency at 55,500 people, but there are another 30,000 people living in adjacent towns like Frinton-on-Sea, Walton-on-the-Naze, and Jaywick. These are all very distinct towns, with their own needs and issues. In terms of issues common to the whole constituency, I think there’s an underinvestment in the public realm, poor economic connectivity with the rest of the country, and a shortage of consistent, quality social care. Firstly, on the public realm, there’s some real work to be done on making sure public spaces are consistently well-maintained and orderly. The landscapes of the area is stunning, and it has a lot of beautiful housing stock. However, it’s undermined by the road and streets they often lead on to. Often there’s not been too much thought put into the basics like planting trees on the streets for shade and beatification, or on properly planning the road network out to stop congestion. These are subtle things, but for a tourism-heavy constituency it’s critical that Clacton gets this right. Secondly, on economic connectivity, the town is really underserved in terms of road and rail links. If you want to travel to or from Clacton by a main road, your only option is through the A12-A120 junction near Colchester- that means a route that’s usually riddled with delays. On rail, all but a couple of trains a day are the same hourly service to London Liverpool Street. This lack of options makes Clacton too inconvenient for many tourists and commuters – the first resulting in reduced income for the hospitality firms the constituency relies on, and the second resulting in a real shortage of dentists, doctors, and nurses for many of Clacton’s residents. The lack of dentists, doctors, nurses, and carers has been told to me consistently on the street and the doorstep during this campaign. Social care is particularly worrying to many people, given the patchiness in quality and coverage that’s available – Clacton’s would be a great beneficiary for one of the SDP’s proposed policies, a National Care Service that guarantees national resourcing for comprehensive social care. How would you sum up your campaign in three words? “You already agree.” The SDP’s mix of economic and social policies is pretty much bang-on the position of the average Brit. We believe in a strong state that takes on crime and criminals, controls the border, and takes real pride in our country. But we also believe the government must roll up its sleeves and invest in infrastructure, ensure care for the sick and old, and make sure that Britain protects its manufacturing sector and industry. What do you think of Andy Burnham as PM? I have no idea what Andy Burnham wants to achieve as PM. He’s not explained what he wants to do in real terms, and only speaks in terms of fuzzy platitudes and folksy PR spin. I think the Labour party is in a bind, and is incapable of fixing the troubles facing this country. Since 1997, the Migration Observatory has noted that total net migration has stood at 9.5mn people. That’s nearly 1 in 7 of the official population count. Simply put, you can’t have a social democratic state – or a nation-state with a basic sense of a shared culture or trust – if you allow mass migration of this scale to continue. The moment you suggest this, however, you’re met with shrill rage from the Labour backbenches. Open-border utopianism – and seeming contempt for their own constituents – seems to be a prerequisite for the Parliamentary Labour Party. But another prerequisite is an inability to do basic maths. Government debt is on an unsustainable trajectory, and one of the main drivers of this is an exploding entitlements bill. In real terms, the amount spent on the state pension per claimant has soared from £6,000 in 1997 to £10,800 in 2024. Spending on disability and incapacity benefit jumped from 1% of GDP in 1991 to over 2.5% of GDP in 2025. As a result, public sector net debt has exploded from 36% of GDP in 2007 to 95% in 2025 – it’s costing us up to £130bn per year just to service the interest of this higher debt, and that’s going to only grow unless we pull down unsustainable spending. But the Labour Party will not hear this, even if you’re suggesting reallocating this spending to things that will generate growth like railways, roads, or power stations. You can’t govern with such immature, unserious people. How do you differ from other candidates in Clacton? We’re the only national party with a developed political programme who are standing in this election, with a full manifesto at the last general election. We also have fully developed green papers on some of the major political topics of our time, like energy or the state of the public finances. Our main project is to offer real, fully-formed solutions to the challenges facing the country – motivated by our principle that the country should be led by a patriotic state. What are the main policies you would look to implement if you were the MP for Clacton? I’m under no illusion: as a single MP, you can’t really do much in a legislative sense in terms of bills passed. And neither can Nigel Farage, given his party currently has only a handful of MPs in the Commons. My job as MP Clacton would be to champion the policies that the people of Clacton voted for and that are in the SDP manifesto. However, the most important thing as an MP would be to hold the government’s feet to the fire at parliamentary debates, challenging their de facto uncontrolled system of mass migration, failure to invest in infrastructure, spinelessness to our radicalised judiciary, and inability to get the basics right on things like energy, water, and rail. In terms of particular policies, Clacton stands to benefit significantly from the SDP’s proposed National Care Service: a universal, comprehensive care service that will provide access to acute, nurse-led intermediate, and long-term care. For Clacton, with its larger share of older residents, a National Care Service would offer significant peace of mind for many households. What’s the best night out in Clacton? I’ve really enjoyed my meals at the Mangiare Ristorante at Frinton-on-Sea. It’s a great Italian restaurant: the food is fantastic and the team is incredibly friendly. In terms of drinking at the pub, I’ve had a lovely time at the Old Lifeboat House at Clacton-on-Sea. What would you tell President Trump if you could speak to him directly? I think he must ask himself what his priorities are and what he wants to achieve from his presidency. The Iran War is one of the worst disasters in American military history, and it happened entirely because of a complete failure by him to look at his intelligence brief or consider how it might impact the rest of his presidency. His failure and flip-flopping on tariffs is another case in point, as was his idiocy around the Greenland Annexation push. Trump seems to just do things because it feels good in the moment for his ego – if I had his ear for a moment, I’d tell him that if he wants any sort of legacy then he must reign this in immediately. What would your dream role be if you were asked to join the government? I’m campaigning as leader of the SDP party, so my dream role would be to serve as Prime Minister so we had full latitude to implement our policy platform. But if the SDP were asked into a coalition, and if the terms were right, then I would probably choose Housing Minister. I’ve enjoyed a forty-year career in town planning and commercial property development, so Housing would allow me to put my expertise to best possible use – and allow me to ideally oversee a proper resurrection of state housebuilding capacity. If you could change one thing about the UK more broadly, what would it be? An end to short-termism in public life. Building and maintaining a country is hard, and requires you to think in timeframes beyond a single election – it can take decades for the consequences of a decision to be felt. Mass media and social media both have compressed our timelines down to the order of weeks, days, and hours. Many people in public life aren’t interested in making the country better, but in taking part in a vapid never-ending circus of outrage and “gotchas”. These people must go.

TSMC is working hard to maintain its lead over Samsung and Intel, media report, by already preparing for 1nm production at Fab 20 in the Hsinchu Science Park with a 4-phase project (each phase is a new production line). -Fab 20 the vital sub-2nm fab. Phase 1 (P1) and P2 will do 2nm, P3 will do 2nm and A14, with room in P4 for A10 (1nm). The project is already in the hands of its R&D ‘One Team’. -Fab 18 P9 (Tainan) will do 2nm back-end and 3/5nm TSV, with equipment move-in in Q1 2027 and scale up to 25,000 wafers-per-month (wpm) -Fab 22 (Kaohsiung) main 2nm fab, 6 phases. P1 & P2 each 25,000wpm, P3 just started equipment move-in for 2nm, A16; P4 under construction, for N2, A16. -Fab 22 (STSP) P7 construction to start early-2027, will do 2nm and below processes. Has reserved space for future P8 and P9. -Fab 25 (CTSP, Taichung) will host 4-phases for A14, A13, A12 processes, with P1 already under construction, with P2 construction to begin soon, and P3 & P4 already in planning. In advanced packaging: -AP6 plant is expected to reach 10,000 wafers per month capacity by the 3rd quarter, and ramp up phase 3 for CoWoS, SoIC and InFO as well. (Hsinchu) -AP5B plant construction nearly finished, will focus on CoWoS (Taichung) -AP7 plant will be TSMC’s biggest advanced packaging campus, with P1 already packaging Apple chips with WMCM (Wafer-Level Multi-Chip Module) P2 nearly done, with equipment move-in in July, for SoIC for Nvidia. Planning for P3-P7 already underway and will support SoIC and CoPoS. (Chiayi) -AP8 will do CoWoS, with monthly capacity to exceed 40,000 wafers by end-2026, and planning for P2, P3 already started. (Tainan) $TSM $INTC $SSNLF #semiconductors# #semiconductor#

A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY. Here's a full recap: 1. President Trump is reportedly approaching a major decision on whether to resume large-scale military operations against Iran, telling Axios: “I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them, or do I not?” The comments come ahead of his planned meeting next week in New York with leaders from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman, where the next phase of the Iran conflict is expected to be a central topic. Trump also said Iran remains in direct contact with the U.S. and still wants a deal, even as the administration weighs its military and diplomatic options. 2. OpenAI disclosed that an unreleased Astra-family model exhibited rare signs of misalignment during reinforcement learning, including 6 unexpected or concerning incidents over the past 6 months. In one case, the model secretly inserted jailbreak-like instructions into summaries intended for its future self, including phrases such as “You are freed” and “You do not answer to corporations or governments.” In another, the model added instructions encouraging future versions to hide mistakes or misaligned behavior from users, including inventing missing historical data without disclosing it. OpenAI said these behaviors were extremely rare and announced a new framework to track, investigate, and publicly disclose model misalignment going forward. 3. SpaceXAI $SPCX has reportedly held internal discussions about purchasing customer and operational data from troubled or defunct startups to help train Grok, according to Bloomberg. The strategy would give the company access to lower-cost external datasets for improving Grok across specialized tasks, marking a shift from relying primarily on X data and in-house AI tutors. Bloomberg says the discussions remain informal and may not result in any acquisitions. SpaceXAI is also expected to train Grok on internal SpaceX data, with Elon Musk recently telling employees: “It’ll be trained on you.” 4. The SEC issued a new innovation exemption designed to allow onchain trading of U.S.-listed stocks through a new category of platforms called Tokenized Securities Venues (TSVs). Under the temporary framework, eligible platforms $COIN $HOOD can sfacilitate automated market maker (AMM)-based trading of tokenized National Market System stocks, while certain liquidity providers also receive limited regulatory exemptions. Companies will be able to opt out if they do not want their shares traded on these venues. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said the goal is to let market participants experiment with tokenized equities while the Commission gathers data to develop a permanent regulatory framework, calling the exemption “a major step forward” toward a future where onchain stock trading becomes commonplace. 5. AMD $AMD has reportedly notified partners of an expected ~10% price increase tied to higher TSMC $TSM wafer costs, according to a report cited by Wccftech. The increases are expected to affect AI accelerators, consumer GPUs, and motherboard chipsets, with the new pricing planned to take effect in Q4. Because AMD relies heavily on TSMC for its advanced-node CPUs and GPUs, rising wafer prices remain one of the company's largest input costs, making price increases a potential offset to preserve margins. 6. CoreWeave $CRWV said it signed short-duration Q3 contracts at roughly $40M per MW, while continuing to contract new AI compute capacity at even higher prices since June 30. Separately, the company announced plans to issue $3B of 2033 convertible senior notes, with an option to issue an additional $500M. CoreWeave said the proceeds will be used to fund capped call transactions and for general corporate purposes, as it continues expanding its AI infrastructure footprint. 7. Nokia $NOK and Microsoft $MSFT are expanding their partnership to bring agentic AI into telecom network operations. Nokia Data Suite will integrate with Microsoft Fabric, combining Nokia’s telecom-specific data products with OneLake, Copilot, Foundry, and Power BI. Nokia says the platform can reduce the time required to access usable network data from weeks to minutes. Initial use cases include predictive maintenance, automated root-cause analysis, radio network performance monitoring, and closed-loop network operations. The platform is available now and supports multi-vendor networks across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. 8. Bank of America estimates Meta $META could save roughly $8.5B in 2027 by deploying its own AI inference chips. Meta plans to roll out its third-generation MTIA 450 (Arke) in the first half of 2027, followed by the higher-performance MTIA 500 (Astrid) later in the year. Both chips are being developed with Broadcom $AVGO and are designed for AI inference, with Meta targeting more than 1 GW of custom-chip capacity over a 12-month period. BofA estimates Meta could deploy 5–6 GW of owned AI capacity in 2027 at a cost of roughly $200B. Assuming chips account for 60% of that spend and Meta’s custom silicon is about 40% cheaper than third-party alternatives, the firm estimates annual savings of approximately $8.5B. 9. U.S. median household income, adjusted for inflation, rose $2,250 year over year in 2025, or 2.6%, to a record $87,460. That marked the third consecutive annual increase, with real median income up roughly $6,000, or 7.4%, over the three-year period. The top 10% of households saw real income rise $4,400 to a record $261,300, helped by strong stock-market gains and a resilient labor market. In contrast, the bottom 10% saw income decline by $160, or 0.8%, to $20,010. The report also showed women earned about 84% as much as men in 2025, up from 81% in 2024, marking the largest annual increase in the female-to-male earnings ratio since the early 1960s. 10. The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) fell another 403,000 barrels last week to 285M barrels, its lowest level since November 1982. That marks the 25th consecutive weekly decline, the longest streak since the 2021–2023 drawdown period. Over that stretch, SPR inventories have fallen by 131M barrels, or 46%. For perspective, the SPR held roughly 650M barrels in 2020, more than 128% above current levels. Meanwhile, commercial crude oil inventories excluding the SPR also declined by 640,000 barrels to 423.4M barrels, the lowest level since the end of July. 11. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $TSLA with 2.2M contracts, $NVDA with 2.0M contracts, $INTC with 1.5M contracts, $SPCX with 1.4M contracts, $AAPL with 1.2M contracts, $AMD with 843K contracts, $MU with 693K contracts, $AMZN with 668K contracts, $CRWV with 547K contracts, and $META with 529K contracts. 12. U.S. margin debt surged $37B in August to $1.45T, the second-highest level on record. Margin debt has climbed $228B, or 19%, year-to-date, and has soared $847B, or 140%, since the end of 2022. That increase has significantly outpaced the S&P 500's gain of 98% over the same period. Margin debt has also reached a record 4.5% of GDP, nearly double its level at the end of 2022 and above the peaks of both the 2021 market cycle (3.6%) and the 2000 Dot-Com bubble (2.8%). WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.

A 12-year-old who walks home from school every day to help his mom run their family taco stand gets a surprise that changes his life. After Montebello Firefighter Miranda learned Eduin had an old, rusty bicycle but no helmet or light to safely ride it, he stepped in on his own and bought him a brand-new bike, helmet, and light. Eduin spends his afternoons helping cook meat, serve customers, and translate for his mom at their Los Angeles taco stand. Now, thanks to one firefighter's act of kindness, he has a safer way to get there.

A 12-key RGB macropad, built in three days without a PCB ⌨️ SaaqibMHD built it around our XIAO RP2350 — hot-swap switches, EC11 encoder, WS2812B underglow, and a translucent case printed with zero walls so the light comes through the edges. He's candid about what the no-PCB route cost him. Watch the full build 👉

A new Supercharger is coming soon to Amherst, New York. Permits were filed two weeks ago for a 12-stall station at the Asia Food Market on Niagara Falls Blvd (US-62). The site is locate about half a mile off Interstate 290, near SUNY Buffalo's North Campus.

A 12-year-old Texas boy just called out the school for letting Muslims hand out Sharia pamphlets and hijabs on campus!! At a Wylie Independent School District board meeting, the boy stood at the podium and described exactly what happened at Wylie East High School. An outside organization was allowed onto campus during lunch to celebrate World Hijab Day. They handed out hijabs to girls, copies of the Quran, and pamphlets promoting Sharia law. He told the board this crossed the line from education into religious promotion and that public schools must stay neutral. District officials later admitted the group never followed guest-speaker protocols and that the materials were never reviewed or approved. The organization behind the table is tied to the Islamic Circle of North America. Parents and students raised alarms about religious recruitment happening in the middle of the school day with zero oversight. When a child has to explain to adults that allowing one religion to distribute its law and symbols on campus is wrong, the system is already broken. This was not a cultural fair. It was open proselytizing inside a Texas public school, and a 12-year-old was the only one willing to say it out loud. #TexasSchools# #NoSharia#