The Cynic: June 3

BUSINESS
This Week’s Business News

Neuralink just raised $650 million to keep putting USB-C ports in your skull.

Elon Musk’s brain-tampering side hustle scored a monster funding round led by Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley immortals. 
That’s right—Wall Street is throwing half a billion at the startup that made a paralyzed guy tweet by thinking, instead of fixing Twitter itself.

They claim it's all about curing blindness, paralysis, and depression.
But let's not pretend half these VCs aren’t fantasizing about streaming porn directly to their prefrontal cortex while driving a Cybertruck. Neuralink says the money will help them build a “scalable” version of their chip. Great—mass production for mind control is what we needed.

Meanwhile, actual hospitals are still faxing test results.
But sure, let’s plug people into the Matrix before we solve, say, insulin prices. The real innovation? Convincing investors that brain surgery is the next consumer electronics category.

Coinbase got hacked again—this time, the breadcrumbs lead to India.

Sources say a third-party vendor in India was compromised, leaking customer data and giving hackers a backstage pass into Coinbase’s systems. And just like that, your crypto might be as secure as a Hotmail password in 2004.

The irony? Coinbase had outsourced compliance.
Yes, the same “regulatory-compliant” exchange that lectures Washington about crypto laws had an entire data pipeline exposed because someone clicked a phishing link. Web3, meet Web0.

No funds were lost—just your personal info.
So relax, your Bitcoin is safe. But your name, email, and every conversation with customer service is now probably being used to train a scam GPT in a server farm outside Mumbai.

Apple is fighting Europe’s antitrust order like it’s a bad iOS update.

The EU wants Apple to open iMessage to third-party apps, calling their current setup a monopoly. Apple calls the demand “unreasonable,” which is rich coming from the company that once removed the headphone jack for “courage.”

The real problem? Apple might lose control over the blue bubble cult.
If iMessage has to talk to outsiders, suddenly green texts aren’t social suicide anymore—and Tim Cook can’t have that. Expect the legal fight to drag out longer than the average iPhone charging cable.

Meanwhile, the EU just wants competition to breathe.
Apple argues this threatens security, but let’s be real—it mostly threatens Apple’s ability to keep you trapped in the ecosystem like a high-end Stockholm Syndrome case.

REAL ESTATE
This Week’s Real Estate News

Companies are dumping office space like it’s 2020 again.

U.S. businesses gave back a record 20 million square feet of office real estate in Q1. Turns out, people still hate commuting—and even CFOs are finally done pretending hybrid was just a phase.

This isn’t a “work-life balance” story. It’s a balance sheet one.
Firms are cutting leases to trim costs, and some are just subletting like broke landlords on Craigslist. Corporate America now looks like a WeWork graveyard with better coffee.

Commercial landlords? They’re the new meme stock bagholders.
The office market’s slow collapse is getting harder to spin. By 2026, the average high-rise might just be a vertical storage unit for broken dreams and Peloton bikes.

The Hamptons rental market is flopping like a trust fund influencer.

Even with TikTok reels and “whale-friendly” wine cellars, summer rentals in the Hamptons are down 20% from last year. Turns out, not even rich people want to overpay for a 1990s beach house with a broken hot tub.

Luxury renters are suddenly price sensitive—sort of.
Homes listed at $250K for the summer are getting slashed to $150K… and still sitting. The vibe? Wall Street’s rich, but cautious. Silicon Valley’s rich, but laying low. And TikTok creators are rich, but banned in Montana.

It’s hard out here for a beachfront McMansion.
When even the 1% are negotiating, you know something’s off. Expect landlords to start throwing in heli rides or a free NFT with every lease.

America’s rich are richer, younger, and self-made-ish.

The number of U.S. households worth $1 million or more has doubled in 12 years, now hitting a record 11.5 million. But it’s not just boomers with golf carts—it’s tech bros, influencers, and Shopify drop-shippers too.

The fastest-growing millionaire demo? Millennials.
That’s right: avocado toast and passive income finally paid off. Many skipped college debt by skipping college, bought crypto early, and turned “content” into cash. And now they’re spending it on private chefs and AI girlfriends.

But let’s not pretend this is a meritocracy.
A lot of the new money still comes from old money, backdoor deals, or simply being early to whatever the next bubble was. Still, America loves a good bootstrap myth—as long as the boots are Balenciaga.

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BREAKING NEWS
This Week’s Headlines

🧱 Over 100 inmates escape Pakistani prison after quake—because even Mother Nature wants regime change.
A 6.0 earthquake shook Balochistan, and in the chaos, guards evacuated a prison—without bothering to count who came back. Spoiler: most didn’t.

🩸 Israeli strike near Gaza food aid site kills at least 15, say rescuers.
Another day, another “targeted strike” hits civilians waiting for humanitarian aid. Tel Aviv calls it war; the rest of the world calls it increasingly unwatchable.

🇮🇳 “Bleed India by a thousand cuts”—India’s top general says Pakistan’s playbook is over.
CDS Gen. Chauhan says India has redrawn the rules of engagement. Translation: the gloves are off, and the subcontinent’s simmering again.

🇳🇱 Dutch government collapses under Wilders’ anti-immigration push.
Geert Wilders tried to make the Netherlands great again. Instead, he made it ungovernable. Coalition talks collapsed—like Dutch housing prices soon will.

🧨 Boulder Molotov attack suspect allegedly wanted to “kill all Zionist people.
The suspect targeted a synagogue and Jewish center with explosives. Authorities are calling it an anti-Semitic terror plot; the rest of us are just wondering what decade we're in.

FUN
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ADVICE
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