They’re calling it “Squidpocalypse of ‘26”: a tractor trailer full of squid overturned onto a roadway in Narragansett, Rhode Island en route to a processing facility out of town. It took a day to open the intersection back up, requiring the use of heavy equipment and a dump truck. The smell was, reportedly, abyssal. Of particular concern to us is that the phrase “Squidpocalypse of ‘26” implies that a Squidpocalypse happens with sufficient frequency in Rhode Island that it necessitates a year to disambiguate which Squidpocalypse is under discussion. 

Stocks fell yesterday as Treasury yields went higher.

Some are calling it social media’s “big tobacco” moment. 

This week, the federal trial against Meta kicked off as a coalition of lawyers from 29 states gave opening statements to a jury in Oakland, California. The lawsuit argues that Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, hurt kids by designing its apps with addictive features, and violated federal child privacy laws.

By Meta’s own math, it could face penalties as high as $1.4 trillion if it loses, as well as court orders that reshape how it does business. 

The trial is expected to go on for several weeks. Coincidentally, that likely timeline runs right into the early October release of “The Social Reckoning,” Aaron Sorkin’s follow up to 2010’s “The Social Network,” which chronicled the founding and early growth of Facebook. The sequel will chronicle the subsequent, ummm, reckoning. 

With shares of Meta already down over 15% in the past month over concerns about the company’s AI spending, the trail and the negative attention it attracts is a risk that could send shares lower.

While a $1.4 trillion judgement against the social media giant – roughly equal to Meta’s current market cap – seems unlikely, Meta did lose a case earlier this month in New Mexico that saw it get hit with almost a billion dollars in fines and penalties for leaving children vulnerable to sexual predators. In their quarterly filings, Meta said that in Q2 it spent $2.4 billion on legal proceedings and said for the full-year its total expenses could be over $165 billion. 

Meta is not the only company with young users staring down lawsuits. Earlier this week, Snapchat shares fell slightly on news that the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals would allow thousands of lawsuits against it to move forward. Given strong public support for increased regulation of social media, the legal and regulatory risk to Meta’s wildly profitable business model seems unlikely to be limited to this single trial. 

— Paige Oamek

China’s IPO machine is starting to speed up again. The Beijing Stock Exchange has already seen roughly three dozen confirmed listings through June 30, up from just a handful in 2025, while activity on tech-focused Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges has been far more mixed, according to KPMG analysis of WIND data.

The renewed pipeline IPO comes alongside some eye-popping debuts. Mainland Chinese IPOs raising at least $100 million have averaged a roughly 345% first-day gain this year, according to Renaissance Capital data. Demand has been especially intense for strategic tech names like robot maker Unitree and memory-chip producer CXMT, both seen as national champions in industries Beijing has made a priority.

Part of the frenzy comes down to scarcity. China’s lengthy approval process makes it harder to go public than in the US, while issuers often price conservatively to make sure their deals get across the finish line. That can leave a lot of upside on the table to be eaten up once trading starts.

And there may be more where that came from. KPMG expects more large-scale listings, particularly from AI and other strategic technology companies. 

— Helena Cheng

Games Workshop is a famously profitable company selling Warhammer figurines. The company reported $900.3 million in global sales in its most recent fiscal year, of which an astonishing $278.1 million was profit after tax, exceptional margins for, like, a financial services company, and astronomical ones for a company that sells pieces of plastic. 

The fastest known star in the Milky Way galaxy is S301, which orbits the black hole at the center of the galaxy and reaches velocities up to 8% of the speed of light.

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