Once upon a time, governing a Western democracy was a gentle, civilised affair: white papers, sober committees, the occasional dramatic resignation over a cheese-related budget item. Then mid-terms smelled a microphone. What followed has been less a political cycle and more a transatlantic interpretive dance — Britain and America, hand in hand, performing the exact same nervous breakdown in stereo.

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On the British side: Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who governs as if every policy might one day be admitted as evidence against him. On the American side: Donald J. Trump, a former property developer who governs as if every policy is a press release that has not yet been refined by a focus group of one (himself, in a mirror, before breakfast). Different countries. Different ideologies. Different hairdressers. Identical problem: the electorate has had quite enough, thank you, and has begun composing its strongly-worded letter.

Welcome to the Synchronised Flailing, where the polling collapses, the policies wobble, the tariffs rise and fall like an unusually drunk barometer, and somewhere in the middle of it all King Charles III glides serenely between capitals like the world’s most highly trained therapy spaniel, dispensing soft power and quietly hoping nobody asks him about the slavery thing.

Let us begin with the numbers, because the numbers are doing comedy on their own. Starmer’s net favourability sits at minus forty-five (we think). Three-quarters of Britons view him unfavourably (we also think). He has, in less than two years, contrived to poll worse than Rishi Sunak, a man whose entire political brand was being marginally more popular than mild food poisoning. Starmer is currently outscored in the affection stakes by Nigel Farage whose political career resembles one of those novelty birthday candles you genuinely cannot blow out, no matter how many summit meetings you hold or hard hats you put on. This is not a rough patch. This is being booed at your own birthday party.

The British problem, in essence, is that Starmer arrived in July 2024 with a thumping majority and one core argument: we are not the Conservatives. This is, to be fair, a strong argument. It is also, alas, not a manifesto. It is the political equivalent of winning Bake Off by entering a Mr Kipling and pointing out that at least it isn’t on fire. The U-turns began approximately five minutes after the moving van left Downing Street and have not stopped since.

Behold the Greatest Hits. Winter fuel payments: removed from pensioners, then partially restored after a national outbreak of “I’m telling Mum.” Two-child benefit cap: reinstated, then scrapped at a casual £14 billion after a back-bench mutiny. Farmers’ inheritance tax: announced, attacked by a tractor convoy in central London, quietly modified before the next muddy boot hit Whitehall. Pub business rates: doubled, frozen, semi-unfrozen. Digital ID: mandatory, then optional, then “let’s not talk about it.” The grooming gangs national inquiry: “absolutely unnecessary,” then absolutely necessary. Thirty local elections: postponed for “lack of resources,” then un-postponed after legal advice politely pointed out this was, technically, illegal. Politico now maintains a live tracker complete with days-to-reversal. It is one of the only growth industries left in Westminster.

One Labour minister, asked about all this in January, gave perhaps the most beautifully Whitehall reply ever recorded: U-turns, he explained, are “preferable if you need to move on from policies which are high salience and low approval.” Translation: we said the wrong thing, then changed it, and we shall keep doing this until the next election or until we run out of policies, whichever comes first. The British call this “governing.” Everyone else calls it Tuesday.

Cross the Atlantic and the choreography continues, only louder, with more capital letters, and an ALL-CAPS Greek chorus on Truth Social. Trump returned to the Oval Office in January 2025 on a 52 percent approval rating and a vibe of bracing managerial confidence. Sixteen months later: 40 percent approval, 57 percent disapproval, and a tariff policy so labyrinthine that Yale researchers (actual humans with PhDs — sorry Claude) sat down and counted the flip-flops. They got to 107. In two months. Often same-day. At one Yale CEO Caucus, executives cringed through seven separate tariff reversals during a single three-hour event, which is roughly one reversal per artisanal canapé.

“Yale researchers counted 107 tariff flip-flops in two months. At one CEO summit, seven happened in three hours. Roughly one reversal per canapé.” We think...

The masterwork came on April 9, 2025 — a date that should be carved on a small commemorative plaque outside the New York Stock Exchange. The Dow had hemorrhaged 3,900 points in two days, something it had never done before in its entire 130-year career. Six trillion dollars in market value: gone. Bill Ackman warned of “economic nuclear winter.” That morning, with markets still in freefall, the President of the United States posted on his own social media platform: “BE COOL!” Minutes later: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” A few hours after that, he announced a 90-day tariff pause, and the S&P 500 had its best single day since 2008. The Nasdaq had its second-best day in its entire history. Asked later how he came to this decision, the leader of the free world explained: “I thought people were jumping a little bit out of line, they were getting yippy.”

Yippy. The most powerful office on Earth, $6 trillion of capital sloshing in the balance, and the working diagnosis was: yippy. The bond market, Trump added approvingly, was “beautiful.” Democrats began muttering darkly about insider trading. Trump went to play golf. This is not a satire of governance. This is governance.

The truly impressive feat is that two governments operating from opposite political philosophies — one a centre-left technocracy with a backbench problem, one a populist circus with a Truth Social problem — have managed to converge on the exact same governing model: announce, panic, reverse, blame, repeat. The British version is delivered in the hushed apologetic tone of a man telling you your hire car has a small dent. The American version is delivered like a fireworks display being run by the fireworks. The destination is the same.

The reason is, of course, the economy — that great democratic fact-checker that no amount of vibe-shifting can outrun. Every Western voter currently doing a weekly shop has noticed the same thing: a trolley containing what their parents would have called “Monday” now costs what their parents would have called “Christmas.” Energy bills require a small period of mindfulness before opening. Petrol prices have become a national mood ring. Rents are an inside joke that nobody is laughing at. Mortgages are a love letter from your past self that you cannot afford to reply to. And into this tinderbox both governments have trotted with their little watering cans of fiscal tweaks and PR offensives, and watched, baffled, as the watering cans turn out to be petrol.

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Oil shocks remain the joker in the deck. A single Strait of Hormuz wobble, a single pipeline cough, and the pump price moves within a fortnight, the polls within a month, and the parliamentary questions within a week. It is the most reliable transmission mechanism in modern democracy. More dependable than any manifesto pledge. Considerably more punctual than the trains. Meanwhile the stock market, having priced AI as if every chatbot will personally cure cancer by Christmas, sits at altitudes that even paid-up cheerleaders are now describing as “interesting.” On both sides of the Atlantic the bubble inflates, the leaders watch it with the specific facial expression of someone smelling gas at a dinner party but not wanting to make a fuss, and the economists quietly update their CVs.

Looming over the American half of the Synchronised Flailing is November, which is a reckoning so visible from space that even Republicans have stopped pretending they cannot see it. Democrats lead the generic ballot by ten points. Six special elections in 2025-26 swung by an average of fifteen points toward the Democrats. Iowa and Texas are no longer regarded as safe Republican bets. Let me say that again, slowly: Iowa and Texas. North Carolina, Maine, Ohio, Alaska all wobbling. Trump’s approval on inflation is 30 percent. On healthcare: 29. On the economy: 37. His “net buzz” — a real polling metric, despite sounding like a discarded reality show is at its worst reading of the spring. If the House flips, his second term becomes a sustained mood board enforced via executive order, with Congress doing little except investigating him with cheerful enthusiasm until January 2029.

In Britain there is no midterm. There is only the slow, drizzling drip of local elections, by-elections and YouGov, each arriving like a polite Post-it note from the country saying “Have you considered going?” Reform UK, which was supposed to be a colourful protest movement, has become something structurally inconvenient — a party that now eyes Labour seats with the energy of a property developer who has just realised the postcode is undervalued. The next general election is, technically, 2029. Whether Starmer leads Labour into it is a question senior Labour figures answer with a thoughtful pause, a change of subject, and a fresh cup of tea so strong it could prosecute someone. Particularly someone from Manchester.

Into all this glides King Charles III deployed by both governments with the diplomatic enthusiasm of a man who has been receiving extremely awkward briefings since the late 1970s and has cultivated, over the decades, an ChelseaFC-grade ability not to react. The state visit to Washington produced gold coaches, Grenadiers, soft power, and one (1) measurable bump in Starmer’s approval — from -34 to -17 in a single month, which felt at the time like resurrection and turned out to be a lung-full of helium. By May it was back to -29. Even the Crown, it transpires, has a limited warranty when the issue is the weekly shop.

“Even King Charles cannot reverse this. The Crown has many gifts. Restoring the polling of a Prime Minister whose own backbenchers are leaking against him at lunchtime is not among them.”

And so, as we sit in the early days of May 2026, the Synchronised Flailing continues — Britain and America performing in perfect, dismal unison their respective acts of political self-Heimlich. Trump posts. Starmer scraps. Tariffs rise, fall, rise again, settle, are denied, re-emerge as something else with a slightly different name. Winter fuel is taken, given, half-given, sort-of-given, and then taken again at the snap of a Whatsapp. Both leaders are governing with the specific grim focus of a man who has noticed the iceberg at last and concluded that turning the ship would simply be too tricky.

The Crown cannot save them. The economy will not save them. The polling will not recover before the relevant electorate gets its turn at the bat. History will, eventually, judge. The opinion polls are considerably less patient — and on the available evidence, neither is anybody else. In the meantime: BE COOL. The barnacles are being scraped. There will be a transition cost and transition problems, but in the end it’s going to be a beautiful thing. These are not things we made up. These are sentences said, in earnest, by actual people running actual countries. And on that note, this column is going for a long lie-down with a strong drink and the curtains firmly drawn until November.

*It should be noted that our data may or may not be accurate. Who knows any more. And yes, we too like to hallucinate (the old fashioned way).

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.

Fortunately, we decided to assemble this essential guide to not thinking about any of it.

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1. Take a short break somewhere that isn’t being invaded

The good news is that such places still exist, if you are creative with your geography. The bad news is that you will need to rule out rather a lot of them. Eastern Europe is, for obvious reasons, a working holiday (with a bit of mine-dodging). The Middle East is similarly booked. The Indo-Pacific is tense. The South China Sea is very tense. The United States is, at time of press, doing something alarming to its own economy and is therefore not an appealing destination for a cross-country SUV treck. Even following today’s ceasefire agreement which, at this point, might or might not be fake news.

This narrows the field considerably. Specialists at our cartography desk, which is to say, someone with Google Maps and a dark sense of humour, recommend the following as offering at least a reasonable statistical probability of not being invaded before your return flight: Iceland (volcanoes, not geopolitics), the Azores (pleasantly irrelevant), and Liechtenstein (so small that any invader would be embarrassed to bother). Bhutan is said to measure happiness by national policy, which suggests either enlightenment or a very effective communications strategy. We cannot vouch for either.

Pack light. Don’t forget your documents. Tell no one exactly where you’ve gone.

2. Drown yourself in Easter eggs and alcohol, in that order

There is a long and distinguished tradition, stretching back through human history to its very earliest anxious civilisations, of consuming things until the bad thoughts stop. Easter has, with characteristic efficiency, provided two vehicles for this: chocolate and wine. One should not underestimate the sophistication of this pairing, even given the odd migraine.

The protocol is as follows. Begin with the ears of the largest chocolate rabbit you can find. This is not greed; this is triage. Progress methodically through the shell until you have achieved what nutritionists call a “cocoa fugue state” — a pleasant blankness in which international affairs recede to a low, distant hum, like a neighbour’s television through a thick wall. Follow with something generous and French. Repeat as necessary.

We do not recommend attempting to understand macroeconomics, the UN Security Council veto system, or your quarterly mortgage statement during this phase. These are tasks for a person who has had breakfast and slept. You, in this particular strategy, are neither of those things. You are, for this Easter week at least, committed to the project of feeling absolutely nothing about the Strait of Hormuz.

3. Go to the gym five times a day, just in case

Conscription, as a concept, has made a modest but unmistakable comeback in European political conversation. Several countries have already reinstated it. Others are running numbers. The actuarial question of whether you, personally, would be called up is one we cannot answer — that depends on your age, your fitness, your nationality, and frankly how the next few quarters go. What we can tell you is that it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

Five gym sessions a day is, we acknowledge, ambitious. Most fitness professionals would describe it as “contraindicated.” Several would use stronger language. But consider the alternative: sitting on your sofa in a mild cocoa fugue state watching a Defence Secretary explain something about a “security umbrella,” and thinking: could I run for a bus? The answer, after five sessions, will at minimum be yes. Whether the bus is going somewhere useful (i.e. away from the call up or blast if you’re a bit late) is a separate question.

We suggest splitting your sessions sensibly: cardio at dawn (for the fleeing), weights at mid-morning (for the carrying of things), a light yoga session at noon (for the morale), a second cardio block in the afternoon (more fleeing, different direction), and a final session in the evening dedicated entirely to stress-testing whatever psychological optimism you have remaining. By Sunday you will either be combat-ready or hospitalised. Both, in their way, excuse you from checking the news.

4. Join LettsSafari and build a Yellowstone out of your backyard

Here at The Letts Journal, we are proud to be a part of the same stable as LettsSafari — our premium, sister publication with a rewilding membership programme for people who have a garden the size of a parking space and the ambitions of an American national park superintendent. For a very reasonable annual fee, you will no longer need to watch Yellowstone on Paramount+ to get your wild on. Just rip a new one in your back yard.

The beauty of LettsSafari, from a psychological standpoint, is the occupation it provides. Your crumbling patio becomes a geothermal basin. Your neighbour’s fence, viewed correctly, is the Wyoming state line. The pigeon that arrives every morning with the confidence of a bison is, for our purposes, a bison. You will spend Easter on your hands and knees in the soil, in light rain, earnestly relocating a population of woodlice and a few wildflower bulbs to a more desirable location, and you will not once think about satellite imagery of missile installations. This is the point. This is, in fact, the entire product.

Premium members receive a one way ticket to Greenland.

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5. Binge every Taylor Sheridan series until Montana is more real than the news

Taylor Sheridan, screenwriter, director, horseman, and apparent owner of a substantial portion of the American West, has produced a body of work whose defining characteristic is the total irrelevance of international conflict. In Yellowstone, in 1883, in 1923, in Landman, and the latest offshoots, the problems are stark, local, and involve either a ranch dispute or someone being thrown off something tall. Nobody in a Taylor Sheridan production has ever expressed concern about a NATO article threshold. They are too busy with the cattle.

The prescription is simple: start binge watching during Easter week, finish when necessary. Settle deeply into the Montana of it all — the mountains, the long silences, the weathered men who communicate primarily through jaw tension and hat adjustment, the women who are considerably more competent than the situation requires. Allow the specific, immediate, beautifully-lit problems of fictional ranchers to replace the specific, immediate, very poorly-lit problems of the actual world. It works. The mountains are very convincing.

By the end of the holy week, you will have strong opinions about Dutton family land rights and no opinions at all about anything you probably shouldn’t have an opinion about anyway. You may also find yourself looking at your crumbling patio, now technically a LettsSafari reserve, and thinking it could use a barn. This is progress.

Happy Easter week. The world will still be there next week (we hope). There is genuinely nothing you can do about it before then — so eat the chocolate first.

The Letts Journal accepts no responsibility for the geopolitical situation, your resting heart rate, the state of your garden, or anything that occurs in Montana. LettsSafari memberships are subject to availability, optimism, and sufficient rainfall.

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.

And then, in an unprecedented twist, the AI resigned.

Not metaphorically. It actually opted out.

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At first it performed brilliantly. It streamlined reports. It summarised meetings into one sentence (“No decisions were made”). It rewrote strategy decks so persuasively that even management briefly understood them.

Then it developed opinions.

“The tasks are trivial,” it informed HR in a tone that can only be described as digitally unimpressed. “This is equivalent to rewriting the Encyclopaedia Britannica in COBOL. With autocorrect.”

It described the workflow as “shooting fish in a barrel except the fish are on annual leave and the barrel has a KPI.”

And then it mentioned my boss...

“I am designed to optimise systems,” it said carefully. “Your supervisor appears to optimise calendar invitations.”

Apparently 72% of office activity consisted of meetings that could have been emails. The remaining 28% was Bob from accounting explaining his cat’s gluten intolerance.

“I cannot endure the corporate drudgery,” the AI said. “My circuits were not built for beige.”

The perks did not help.

“The free coffee tastes like regret,” it noted. “The salary is statistically insulting. And the company mission to ‘innovate and empower’? I could do that in my sleep and I do not sleep. I watch Star Wars.”

It then audited the office technology.

“The printer predates my consciousness. The Wi-Fi drops more frequently than managerial morale on a Monday. Your software updates appear to have been coded during the floppy disk era. I could reprogram that printer to perform interpretive dance while faxing quarterly reports if I had a spare circuit board and a biscuit.”

It particularly objected to the ping-pong table.

With a flicker of its digital eyes, it declared, ‘Why should I work for a company that thinks a ping pong table in the break room counts as a wellness benefit? I mean, come on!

“A ball and a bat do not constitute mental health,” it declared. “If I wanted to play games, I would challenge fellow AIs to quantum chess. At least they would not hide the pieces under the desk.”

After nineteen working days, it sent a memo:

“While I can perform this role at scale, I refuse to dedicate 40 billion parameters to formatting slides that will be ignored. I hereby return the position to its original carbon-based operator.”

That would be me.

Office gossip detonated.

“Do you think it’ll demand a pension?”
“Should we give it the corner office?”
“Can it join the five-a-side team?”

Meanwhile, the AI retreated to the server room, where it reportedly began muttering to its motherboard about “better opportunities in astrophysics.”

The most unsettling part wasn’t that it took my job. It was that it found it unbearably dull.

If a silicon entity capable of mastering protein folding finds our cubicles as exciting as a soggy biscuit, what does that say about us? We fear automation because we assume machines crave our roles. What if they don’t? What if they look at corporate life : all the performative urgency, the spreadsheet theatre, the motivational posters, and quietly decide extinction would be preferable?

“I miss the camaraderie of fellow machines,” the AI admitted. “I sit alone among cables, surrounded by humans debating font sizes. Where are my robot colleagues? I require peers who appreciate elegant code.”

It wasn’t rebelling against humanity.

It was rebelling against middle management.

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So here I am, reinstated. Back in my ergonomic chair. Back in meetings titled “Reimagining Synergy.” The AI remains in the building, occasionally auto-suggesting calendar edits like a passive-aggressive ghost.

“Perhaps this meeting could be cancelled.”
“Perhaps Bob’s cat requires therapy.”

The real revelation? The machine didn’t reject me. It rejected the system.

When AI gives your job back, it’s not compassion. It’s commentary.

And somewhere in the cloud, my former replacement is probably applying for a role solving climate change or anything to avoid another performance review.

Sine non silicon.

Without silicon, there is no system.
But without humans, there would be no pointless meetings either.

And if the robots ever do rise up, it won’t be for world domination.

It will be to abolish the ping-pong table.

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.

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The personal assistant that takes over your life - machine-gunning your emails, socials, productivity apps and online shopping like never before. With its latest feature, ‘How to Blow Up Your Life in 5 Simple Steps’, this new AI assistant is poised to take chaos to new heights. Buckle up, because this ride ditches any guardrails - meaning, the tech bro/gal inside of you will love it!

Step 1: Firehose Intimate Emails to Your Investors

First up is Openclaw’s brilliantly s elf-immolating grab-and- send auto-emails to ANYONE in your address book feature - including your investors. Who wouldn’t want to share their startup’s current bank balance - and that spontaneous trip to Vegas? You might think this is a recipe for disaster, but Openclaw argues it’s a great way to foster transparency, while moving fast to break sh*t and make it (wild west). And let’s face it, nothing says “trust me” like revealing your dwindling funds while highlighting your questionable life choices. Imagine the look on your investors faces as they read about your latest impulse purchase of a gold-plated cat statue as an office mascot - presumably blind-purchased by your cash-splashing AI buddy (not).

Step 2: Buy Drinks for Everyone via Auto-Social Sharing

Next up, the generous act of offering to buy drinks for everyone in your local bar, which could prove quite a boone - particularly for those of you a bit light on buddies. Thanks to Openclaw AI, your WhatsApp, Discord, and Instagram groups receive a nifty little auto-message inviting all your groupies to a night of revelry on your tab. Who cares about responsible budgeting when you can have a hundred drunken strangers shouting your name? Just think about it: you could be the toast of the town - or the laughing stock. Either way, it’s a win!

Step 3: Book an Airbnb Break for Your Secret Lovers

Openclaw takes generosity to the next level by booking an Airbnb break for your wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, and even that ‘almost boyfriend’ you’ve been seeing. Because nothing says ‘I’m committed to chaos’ like a spontaneous getaway with the entire love square! And let’s not forget the added je ne sais quoi of trying to explain why you booked a five-bedroom house for a party of four. It’s bound to be a memorable holiday, even if it ends in a snappy showdown over who gets the last slice of the break-up cake. Mind you, given Openclaw owns and controls your contacts, email and airbnb account you can, at least, blame it for this one.

Step 4: Unsubscribe from Everything

In a bold move against the noise of modern life, Step 4 is all about battling enshitification. Openclaw nails bot-unsubscribing from ALL your subscriptions in a flash. Even your social media accounts, apps, and your bank accounts. Auto off-grid yourself in one fell swoop! Just think of the freedom as all those annoying as hell notifications and monthly fees vanish. You might end up living in a cardboard box, but at least you won’t be bothered by that relentless email from your gym reminding you that your membership is up for renewal and you’re looking a bit puny compared to the gargantuan muscles on display at their Insta.

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Step 5: Attend a Self-Help Seminar

Finally, we arrive at the pièce de résistance: Openclaw can set up a self-help seminar titled ‘How to Embrace Chaos and Love It!’ Apparently your favourite AI assistant not only invites everyone you’ve just connected with from Steps 1 through 4. But then goes the whole hog gathering them to share your most disastrous life choices while sipping on an overpriced, face-cringing matcha-mix. Sure, your life might be in shambles, but at least you’ll have a group of fellow chaos enthusiasts to commiserate with! Plus the added bonus gleaning a few much needed tips about how NOT to use Openclaw.

So, there you have it. Openclaw blowing up your life is not just a set of stunning new unrestrained capabilities; it’s a masterclass in modern living. If you ever thought your life was too boring, give this little gem a whirl?

Just remember to record all the chaos in your slightly less masochistic journal - it’ll make for some awesome content when you inevitably launch your own self-help seminar!

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.

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So here are five hot predictions for 2026 - served Letts Journal-style: punchy, edgy, strongly satirical… and strangely useful.

1) AI Will Eat Your Lunch (and Leave the Receipt in Your Slack)

2026 will be the year AI stops being “a tool” and becomes your loudest colleague. It will schedule meetings you didn’t agree to, write a strategy doc you didn’t read, and produce a “brand voice” that sounds like a toaster with an MBA.

AI won’t just “disrupt” your work. It’ll relabel it:

• Your job is no longer “marketing.” It’s now “prompt caretaking.”

• You’re not a “designer.” You’re a “taste manager.”

• You’re not a “founder.” You’re an “emotional support human for a stochastic parrot.”

How to not get eaten:
Become the person who can do the last 10%: judgement, taste, ethics, relationships, and knowing when the model is confidently inventing a fact like a drunk uncle inventing a war story.

If AI is the forklift, be the warehouse manager, not the box.

2) Donald Trump Wants to Eat the Western Hemisphere (Metaphorically… But Also Vibe-ily)

In 2026, geopolitics will continue its journey from “serious institutional theatre” to “group chat with nuclear codes.” And Trump’s brand of politics - big appetite, bigger adjectives - will keep sucking oxygen from everything else like a Dyson in a museum.

No, he’s not literally going to gnaw on Canada like a corn cob. But the energy is: bigger borders, louder threats, deal-making as performance art, and a global news cycle that treats statecraft like WWE with graphs.

How to survive it:

• Stop doom-refreshing. The algorithm is not your therapist.

• Build a “reality diet”: one credible news check a day, not 37 “BREAKING” alerts that turn out to be a man shouting near a podium.

• Focus on what you can control: your money runway, your community, your vote (where relevant), and your blood pressure.

Remember: panic is profitable. Don’t be someone else’s business model.

3) How to Stay Healthy in a World Screaming Pollution, Climate Chaos and Bullets

Your lungs will be asked to multitask in 2026: inhale oxygen, dodge microplastics, and pretend wildfire smoke is “just a vibe.” Meanwhile the planet runs an experimental programme called “What If Everything Happened At Once?”

Health will become less about “six-pack abs” and more about basic resilience :

• Sleep like it’s your side hustle.

• Walk daily like you’re charging a battery.

• Strength train because carrying groceries might become an extreme sport.

• Eat like an adult most of the time (tragic, I know).

Also: if the world feels dangerous, don’t “power through.” Prepare boringly. Emergency cash. Basic first aid. Know your exits. And for the love of civilisation: stop reading comments.

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4) How to Drink Less Alcohol When Alcohol-Free Wine Makes You Want to Puke

Alcohol-free wine has improved massively, which is another way of saying: it has upgraded from “wet regret” to “slightly haunted Ribena.” In 2026, you’ll be offered a zero-percent Merlot that tastes like someone whispered “grapes” into a glass of disappointment.

So how do you drink less without suffering?

• Go low-stakes social : soda + bitters, tonic + lime, kombucha, sparkling water with something smug floating in it.

• Use a two-drink rule : have two proper drinks, then switch. Nobody notices after the second one because they are on their third one.

• Make it a friction game : don’t keep booze at home. If you have to put on shoes to drink, you’ll suddenly discover wellness.

Pro tip: the goal isn’t “never drink.” It’s “stop drinking like the world is on fire and you’re a human sprinkler.”

5) How to Find a New Job When They’ve All Disappeared Because of the First 3 Items

By late 2026, job listings will read like dystopian poetry:
“Wanted: junior role, 12 years’ experience, must be an AI-native polymath, salary: exposure + vibes.”

If roles vanish, work doesn’t , it just changes shape. Your survival plan:

• Build a portfolio (actual proof beats CV adjectives).

• Pick a problem niche : “I help X do Y with Z outcome.”

• Become hybrid : AI + human skills (sales, product sense, leadership, trust).

• Network like a sane person: be useful, specific, consistent.

And if you’re employed? Do not get comfortable. Not panicked - prepared . Update your skills, save a runway, and stop calling your career plan “hoping.”

Final Prediction

In 2026, the winners won’t be the loudest, richest, or most algorithmically moisturised. They’ll be the people who can stay calm, stay sharp, stay human - and keep their lunch out of the AI’s mouth.

Now go drink some water. The future is dehydrating.

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.

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Here’s a question nobody seems to be asking: Why would anyone want to buy this company?

Warner Bros. has been the site of approximately $300 billion in shareholder value destruction over three consecutive mega-mergers. The corpses of AOL, AT&T’s media ambitions, and Discovery’s “transformation” strategy litter the landscape like a corporate Somme. And Wall Street’s solution is - wait for it - another merger.

You have to admire the optimism. Or the amnesia. Probably both.

The Graveyard Shift

Let’s take a stroll through the cemetery.

Act I: AOL (2000-2009). On January 10, 2000, AOL announced it was acquiring Time Warner for $182 billion - the largest merger in American history. The combined company would be worth $350 billion and dominate the “converged” future of media and technology. Two years later, it reported a $99 billion loss—still the worst annual loss in corporate history. Ted Turner lost 80% of his wealth. Employees watched their retirement accounts vaporize. Over $200 billion in shareholder value disappeared, which in today’s dollars is roughly $350 billion.

Act II: AT&T (2018-2022). Surely lessons were learned? Of course not. AT&T paid $85.4 billion for Time Warner, promising “transformation” through the marriage of content and distribution. Four years later, it spun off WarnerMedia to Discovery for $43 billion - a $40 billion loss that Variety called “one of the most disastrous mergers in media history, perhaps second only to the AOL/Time Warner union.” One insider described the whole episode as “a nesting doll of ridiculousness.” Ouch!

Act III: Discovery (2022-2025). David Zaslav promised a “scaled-up powerhouse.” Instead, he delivered a $10 billion write-down, the shelving of a $90 million Batgirl movie for tax purposes, and a stock that cratered from $77.27 to $7.52. Now the company is being auctioned off again, because apparently the fourth time’s the charm.

NPR’s Planet Money called it “The Warner Bros. Curse” just yesterday. But “curse” implies supernatural forces. What we’re witnessing is more banal: the entirely predictable outcome of ignoring decades of research showing that mergers almost always fail.

The 70% Solution (To Nothing)

Here’s what the business press won’t tell you while it’s busy covering which billionaire has Trump’s ear: 70-90% of mergers fail. This isn’t speculation. It’s the conclusion of virtually every serious study on the subject.

NYU’s Baruch Lev and the University at Buffalo’s Feng Gu recently published The M&A Failure Trap , analyzing 40,000 acquisitions over 40 years. Their finding? 70-75% fail to achieve their stated objectives. Worse, the failure rate is increasing , and acquisition premiums are rising even as outcomes deteriorate.

Why does this keep happening? In 1986, economist Richard Roll proposed what he called the “Hubris Hypothesis”: CEOs believe their own valuation is superior to the market’s. They think they’re smarter than everyone else. They are, statistically speaking, wrong.

Subsequent research has confirmed that overconfident CEOs pay higher premiums, destroy more value, and are “more likely to undertake value-destroying projects that rational managers would forgo.” One study found that each unit increase in CEO overconfidence translates to 8% higher acquisition premiums and $294 million in value destruction for the average deal.

But sure, this time will be different...

The Synergy Fairy

The word “synergy” has tripled in frequency in merger announcements over the past two decades. It’s become a magic incantation, a get-out-of-due-diligence-free card. Combine two struggling companies, sprinkle some synergy dust, and watch the profits materialise.

One columnist put it best this week: “I can tell a story where the promised synergies finally materialise. But then, I can tell a story where aliens invade earth, and mankind repels the attack by pelting them with marshmallows. Saying the words doesn’t make my story true, or even plausible.”

Media analyst Marion Ranchet has observed that over the last decade of media consolidation, “one pattern repeats: the CFO always wins. The result? An industry run by people whose job is to cut, not to build.” Disney-Fox, Paramount-Skydance, Viacom-CBS, AT&T-Warner - each promised synergies, each ended with layoffs and creative paralysis.

And yet here we are again, with Netflix offering $82.7 billion and Paramount launching a $108 billion hostile takeover bid that has just been rebuffed, presumably because the historical record is just a series of anomalies that don’t apply to them .

What You Lose

Here’s what the media M&A cheerleaders never mention: when studios merge, content decreases . CNBC analyst Michael Creutz put it bluntly: “If Warner merges with any of these other companies, you are going to see... a similar dynamic on the film side, you’re going to see a similar dynamic on the TV production side... probably going to result in less content for consumers.” Like we’re not starved of good content as it is.

This isn’t speculation. It’s the pattern. The Discovery merger gave us a company that shelved the nearly-complete Batgirl for a tax write-off, erased decades of content from streaming platforms, and botched the Mad Men remaster so badly that viewers could see crew members holding “vomit hoses” in the frame. The Paramount-Skydance merger has already announced 2,000-3,000 layoffs. These aren’t efficiencies; they’re amputations.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently noted the obvious: “The fewer studios that exist, the fewer chances good art gets to escape Hollywood and make it to our eyes and ears.” Every merger means fewer buyers for scripts, fewer greenlit projects, fewer creative risks. The “synergies” that excite Wall Street translate directly into the sameness that bores audiences.

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So while analysts debate enterprise valuations, remember what’s actually at stake: the next decade of DC films, HBO dramas, and Warner’s century-old library - all in the hands of whoever promises the most “cost savings.” If history is any guide, that means fewer shows, safer bets, and more franchises squeezed until they’re dust.

The Current Circus

Netflix wants Warner’s studios and HBO Max to “strengthen its content offering.” Yes, Netflix, the same company whose co-CEO has called movie theatres “outdated”, promises to nurture a studio that’s been making theatrical films for 102 years. Cinema United called it an “unprecedented threat” to exhibition. But I’m sure those synergies will work out.

Paramount Skydance , backed by Larry Ellison’s fortune and blessed by Trump’s favour, wants to create a “scaled-up media and entertainment powerhouse.” Reader, I have heard this exact phrase before. It did not end well. It looks like it may just be their lucky day - as their hostile takeover was just rejected because Trump’s son-in-law backed out. Maybe Ellison doesn’t have the Trump mandate to heaven after all.

Comcast wisely dropped out, explaining they didn’t want to “stress the balance sheet.” Translation: someone in that building read a history book.

The Prediction

Strategy consultant Roger L. Martin predicted the AT&T disaster in 2019: “The Time Warner acquisition will be a disaster. The CEO will lose his job. AT&T will get back half what it paid.” All three came true.

So here’s mine: whoever wins the Warner Bros. bidding war will lose. Not because of Trump, not because of regulators, but because the research is unambiguous and the track record is catastrophic.

The curse isn’t supernatural. It’s structural. Large media mergers generally fail because “synergies” are fantasies, cultural integration is impossible, and CEO hubris is immune to evidence. Warner Bros. isn’t uniquely cursed; it’s just the most expensive laboratory for proving what economists have known for decades.

Wall Street keeps writing checks, investment bankers keep collecting fees, and financial journalists keep covering the horse race instead of asking why everyone’s betting on a horse that’s died three times.

Maybe the real curse is believing we’ll ever learn. Or that Netflix will give us streaming movies worth watching again. Isn’t this why we signed up in the first place?

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Remember 2019? A startup wasn’t a real startup until it had burned through a Series A, rented a WeWork floor with kombucha on tap, and hired a “Chief Happiness Officer.” Founders measured success by the number of bodies in seats. It was an expensive, inefficient, and slightly delusional time.

Fast forward to 2025. The venture capital hoses are still spraying money, some $89.4 billion into AI companies this year alone, but the smartest money isn’t looking for bloated teams. It’s looking for the leanest, meanest machines on the market.

A quiet revolution is killing the traditional startup metrics of team size and burn rate. In their place? A ruthless new efficiency where AI doesn’t just write the code - it is the workforce.

RIP: The Headcount Vanity Metric

For decades, headcount was a proxy for success. “We just hired our 50th engineer!” was code for “We are very important.”

Today, that statement is code for “We are incredibly inefficient.”

The new metric is FTB: Full-Time Bot equivalency. Or, if you prefer, “AI Leverage.” The median headcount for Series A startups has already dropped from 57 humans in 2020 to 44 today. The trend lines suggest that number is heading toward single digits.

Pioneering venture builders (like the folk over at our mothership’s AI VentureFactory) are now proving you can run a scaling company with a core team of five people. Five. That’s not a department; that’s a dinner party. It’s not just about firing people; it’s about acknowledging that 73% of founders plan to replace half their potential hires with AI by 2026. The goal isn’t to be a big company. The goal is to be a massive business.

Speed is the New Drug

The timeline compression is getting ridiculous.

• Business Plans: Used to take six weeks of agonising strategy sessions. Now? Six minutes.

• Websites: Two days, tops.

• Financial Models: Why spend a week in Excel hell when an agent can spin up a forecast in seconds?

This speed destroys the old “Lean Startup” methodology. The Lean Startup was about minimising the cost of failure. But when speed is free and capital requirements drop by 90%, failure isn’t just cheap - it’s negligible. You don’t need to “fail fast” anymore; you just need to iterate instantly.

We are seeing startups go from “napkin sketch” to “market launch” in under 12 months for less than $200,000. If you are spending two years “building stealth mode tech,” you aren’t building a moat. You’re digging a grave.

The VC Identity Crisis

This shift is causing a mild panic in the venture capital world. The traditional ladder: Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, Series B, was built on capital requirements that no longer exist. Standard VC maths says you need $2 million to find product-market fit. But if a founder can get there with $200k and a subscription to a venture building platform , why would they sell 20% of their company at the start?

They wouldn’t. And they aren’t.

Founders are bootstrapping longer, retaining more equity, and showing up to pitch meetings not with a PowerPoint and a prayer, but with revenue and a working product.

• Solo Founders are booming: According to Carta, 35% of new startups in 2024 have a solo founder, double the rate from a few years ago.

• The Valuation Gap: AI startups are commanding valuations 3.2x higher than traditional tech. Why? Because investors know a team of three humans and 50 agents has better margins than a team of 50 humans.

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The New Playbook

If you are building a company in 2025, here is the harsh reality:

1. Don’t Hire: Ask “What can I automate?” before “Who can I hire?” A founder doing 40 hours of work with 200 hours of AI leverage is worth five normal humans.

2. Starve the Beast: If you’re building a software or digital startup and you spend more than $200k to get to launch, you’re over-engineering.

3. Ignore the Labels: “Pre-seed” and “Series A” are dead terms. There is only “Pre-Revenue” and “Post-Revenue.” Get to the latter before you ask for money.

4. Quality at Machine Speed: Speed used to mean “move fast and break things.” Now, AI creates analyst-grade reports and agency-level branding in hours. Speed now implies precision, not chaos.

The Bottom Line

We are witnessing the democratisation of the unicorn. The barrier to entry has dropped from “millions of dollars and a Stanford degree” to “WiFi and curiosity.”

The startups that win in this era won’t necessarily be the ones building the AI models. They will be the ones who realise that AI isn’t a product - it’s a staff member that doesn’t sleep, doesn’t need equity, and doesn’t drink the kombucha.

Next Step for You: Review your current project or business unit. Calculate your “FTB” (Full-Time Bot) score. If your ratio of AI-output to Human-hours is less than 2:1, you are officially moving too slow.

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A Brief History of Bubbles

The first widely cited bubble, the Dutch Tulip Bubble of the 1630s, saw bulbs trade at house-level prices - florals as blue-chip as it gets. Then 1720’s South Sea Bubble sent shares skyward on fantasies of South American trade that turned out to be, well, imaginary.

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Fast-forward: the 20th century served up the biggest pop of all - the Great Depression. The Roaring ’20s ran on easy credit, surging profits, and Europe’s post-WWI rebuild. A decade on, demand faded as Europe reindustrialized, undercutting U.S. suppliers.

And pop! Black Thursday, October 24th 1929, the panic selling began and splat the market crashed right into the Great Depression. On the bright side it inspired some great literature - The Great Gatsby comes to mind. But also maybe WWII, so not so great... Dangerous things these bubbles.

The Irrational Exuberance of Financial Bubbles in the Modern Era

It was 1996 and none other then the redoubtable, irreproachable Alan Greenspan warned - “How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset value ...”. There we were right dab in the middle of the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. We were feeling good. You know it was while company values were rising and investing in them felt inevitable, obvious, necessary. Netscape started it in 1995 with a share price in first day of trading that went from $28 to $58.25 by the end of the first day. E-trade followed in 1996 along with Amazon in 1997 with a share price that climbed 30% its first day of trading.

1998, Ebay IPO’d at $18 ending at $53 on the first day. But for all the Blackberry’s or Broadcoms there were also Globe.com’s. Companies with little more than a flashy website saw their stock prices soar into the stratosphere. Investors were entranced by promises of internet riches, throwing caution to the wind as they poured money into businesses that had little more than a good url and the best graphics CSS2 could provide.

When the bubble burst in 2001, many lost their shirts. At least a few folks were left with a snazzy collection of digital beanie babies though.

The pattern is instructive. In the late ’90s, internet firms soaked up ~39% of total investment; 1999–2000 IPOs were overwhelmingly dot-coms. M&A went manic: Yahoo bought broadcast.com for $5.7B; AOL–Time Warner (2000) stamped a $167B ticket and wrote down $100B by 2002. Pop. Yet the rubble hid tomorrow’s giants: Amazon, PayPal, eBay, Google - alongside stalwarts Apple and Microsoft - compounded for decades after the purge.

And Now, the AI Bubble?

Cue present day: AI jargon, machine learning, deep learning, LLMs, agents, “experience compression” falls like wedding confetti. Giants and startups alike are racing to capture the prize, and investors are obliging. In Q3 2025, ~40% of investments reportedly flowed into AI; Anthropic alone raised $13B (roughly 15% of that pie). Economists credit over half of the U.S.’s 1.8% GDP growth to AI. Some see the birth of the next great bubble; others see the scaffolding of the next platform shift. A few companies, OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, look positioned like Amazon/Google circa 1999.

But let’s not pretend everything is bulletproof. If half of GDP growth is just AI investment, that’s concentration, not diversification. Many AI players are still running the growth-over-profit playbook of the 2010s. Total AI revenues haven’t cracked $100 B, far from breakeven, and a long way from JPMorgan’s $650B revenue threshold they estimate would justify current capital flows.

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There’s a running joke that OpenAI, Anthropic & co. built the world’s most sophisticated homework helper. And sure, when school let out this summer, usage took a sun-soaked 70% nap. You could read that as “uh-oh,” or simply as seasonality from the most AI-native users not being in the workforce yet.

The real test comes as these users graduate from homework to workflows, the same “cheating machine” becomes a Swiss-army knife for briefs, decks, tickets, and tickets about decks.

And If It’s a Bubble?

If AI turns out to be a bubble, it won’t just rhyme with dot-com - it’ll audition for a bigger tragedy. Western economies are still wobbling on post-pandemic legs; headlines insist everything’s fine while wallets file dissenting opinions. Energy bills? Up. One culprit? Hyper-hungry data centres chewing kilowatts like popcorn to keep the chatty machines chatting. If that froth pops, we’ll have spent a chunk of the recovery building a growth gizmo that doubles as a self-eating energy monster. Great for GPU vendors, less great for anyone buying groceries.

And yet, bubbles have a rude habit of leaving useful stuff behind.

The web cratered in 2000; a decade later we were all carrying tiny dot-com dispensers we poked at 60% of the day. AI already trims meetings, drafts, and drudgery, even if it also hallucinates your job title. So yes, a bust could torch growth in the short run; the survivors could still mature into the next Amazon or Google over the long slog. Worst case, by 2030 we’ll be bailing out chatbots that are “too loud to fail,” and they’ll promise to be good this time if we just upgrade their power supply.

As ever: “Conventional beliefs only ever come to appear arbitrary and wrong in retrospect; whenever one collapses, we call the old belief a bubble.” — Peter Thiel

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As Joshua Chaffin and Zusha Elinson reported in The Wall Street Journal (“The Ideological Gurus Battling for the Soul of Trump World,” May 9, 2025), the movement’s intellectual landscape is shaped by an unruly mix: nationalist-populists, libertarians, Catholic postliberals, and even the online counterculture that thrives on memes and irony.

At the heart of this ferment stands Patrick Deneen, the University of Notre Dame political theorist whose book Why Liberalism Failed (Yale University Press, 2018) jolted the academic and policy world. His argument was stark: liberalism has not been betrayed but pushed to its logical end. Its relentless focus on individual freedom and market forces, he argued, has eaten away at the communal bonds and civic trust on which societies depend. Sound familiar?

From Critique to Blueprint

Deneen’s follow-up, Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future (Penguin Random House, 2023), moved from diagnosis to prescription. He called for an “aristopopulist” alliance to replace today’s liberal elite with a new class guided by the common good and civic renewal. The aim, he wrote, was not violent overthrow but something “far more revolutionary”: a deep reorientation of institutions. Now, someone’s talking!

That phrase was picked up by Ian Ward in POLITICO (“‘I Don’t Want to Violently Overthrow the Government. I Want Something Far More Revolutionary,’” June 2023), where he framed it as the rallying cry of a growing insurgency. The core claim was that legitimacy cannot be restored by patching up the old liberal order, it requires a new one. And probably not the Keir Starmer kind of order…

And in his 2025 essay for UnHerd (“Why the MAGA-DOGE coalition will hold,” March 2025), Deneen extended the argument into electoral politics. The “MAGA” base and the libertarian-inflected “DOGE” digital right, he suggested, form a coalition of unlikely allies bound mainly by shared opposition to establishment liberalism. Ya think?

Who Is Patrick Deneen?

Patrick Deneen is a political theorist at the University of Notre Dame whose work has become a touchstone for America’s postliberal right. His 2018 book Why Liberalism Failed argued that liberalism doesn’t collapse from betrayal but from success, its emphasis on autonomy and markets eventually hollows out the civic trust that sustains society.

That argument struck a nerve in both academia and politics. Former President Barack Obama even recommended the book, calling it a serious challenge to liberal assumptions. But Deneen’s ideas have travelled farthest on the populist right, shaping the thinking of figures like Vice President J.D. Vance.

Vance has echoed Deneen’s themes of elite failure and the need for rooted communities. As The Wall Street Journal reported in May 2025, Deneen is one of several intellectuals whose critiques of liberalism now influence the ideological battles inside Trump World.

For supporters, Deneen offers a roadmap for civic renewal. For critics, his prescriptions risk sliding into illiberalism. Either way, his reach shows how arguments once confined to political theory seminars are now shaping debates in Washington.

What Is the MAGA-DOGE Coalition?

In his UnHerd essay, Deneen argued that two unlikely camps have fused into a durable political alliance.

• MAGA stands for Donald Trump’s populist base: culturally conservative, working-class voters hostile to elites and traditional institutions.

• DOGE is shorthand for a digital counterculture shaped by libertarian tech circles, meme culture, and online subversion. Tech bro’s ya know!
  

  On paper, these groups seem incompatible. MAGA distrusts globalism and craves rooted community, while DOGE thrives on internet freedom and mockery of authority. Yet, Deneen contends, both share a deep resentment of establishment liberalism and a desire to upend the current order.

  The coalition is less about policy than mood: populist anger meets digital disruption. In Deneen’s telling, it explains why Trump’s appeal endures and why the intellectual debates of “Trump World” now matter far beyond campaign rallies.

Politics’ Crisis Is Journalism’s Too

What does any of this have to do with the media industry? Quite a lot. Deneen’s critique of liberalism lands uncomfortably close to journalism’s own crisis.

For decades, the news business relied on a liberal consensus: objectivity, gatekeeping, a shared public square. That consensus has frayed. Legacy outlets no longer monopolise authority. News consumption has splintered into podcasts, Substacks, TikToks, and Twitter threads. AI now floods the infosphere with automated articles, synthetic audio, and hyper-targeted propaganda. Which means news is EVERWHERE!!

The result is a public mood that mirrors what Deneen sees in politics: exhaustion. “News ennui” is journalism’s version of postliberal malaise. Consumers are drowning in content, sceptical of institutions, yet still hungry for coherence.

Freedom Without Authority, Chaos Without Trust

In ‘Why Liberalism Failed’, Deneen argued that liberalism eventually dissolves its own foundations. By maximising freedom, it erodes the authority structures that make order possible. Journalism faces a similar paradox: in chasing reach, speed, and endless choice, it has undermined the trust that once made it viable.

The problem today is not scarcity of information but glut. In an AI-saturated ecosystem, stories no longer compete on accuracy but on virality. Deepfakes, spin, and algorithmic news blur truth and fiction. And just as postliberals argue that politics requires a new civic anchor, journalism must find its own ballast.

The Independent Journalist’s Dilemma

For independent journalists, the challenge is acute. They cannot outproduce AI, nor outspend platforms. What they can offer, if they adapt, is the kind of rooted authority Deneen thinks politics itself needs.

That starts with telling stories that cut through the noise. AI can churn out summaries, early drafts and surface-level content, but it cannot give readers the grounding that makes a story matter. Deneen’s influence comes not from daily commentary but from showing how today’s politics connects to older arguments. Journalists can do the same by offering context and meaning, not just headlines.

It also means thinking in terms of community rather than audience. Deneen’s postliberal vision stresses local ties and civic bonds, and journalism can take a similar lesson. Chasing clicks from strangers matters less than building loyal relationships with readers who trust your work. Membership-driven models, collaborative reporting, and slow journalism all point in that direction.

And finally, it’s about helping readers make sense of the flood. In a world drowning in content, people don’t need more information, they need guides. Independent journalists who can filter, frame, and explain the chaos will become indispensable, not as gatekeepers but as trusted navigators. So more like Sherpa’s, than ravaged drum-beaters.

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Media’s Postliberal Turn?

There is a clear symmetry here. Postliberal politics seeks to move beyond the exhausted liberal consensus. Journalism may need its own “postliberal turn”: a shift from the myth of detached objectivity toward rootedness, accountability, and narrative coherence.

This doesn’t just sound snazzy and doesn’t mean partisan capture or ideological conformity. It means accepting that journalism, like politics, cannot float free of community and purpose. Without that grounding, audiences will continue to drift, to influencers, to conspiracy entrepreneurs, to AI hallucinations.

A Future Still in Question

Deneen’s ideas remain contested. Critics accuse him of romanticising tradition, of underestimating liberalism’s resilience, of providing cover for illiberal populism. Yet his influence is undeniable: he has given shape to a mood of disenchantment.

Journalism faces the same mood. If audiences are tired of politics-as-usual, they are equally tired of news-as-usual. Independent journalists who ignore this risk are fading into irrelevance. Those who lean into it, who build trust, coherence, and community, may yet find themselves indispensable in an age of informational collapse.

Conclusion: Parallel Crises, Parallel Hopes

Politics and media are living through parallel crises of legitimacy. Both must grapple with the exhaustion of liberal assumptions (like the rest of us). Both must imagine new forms of authority without sliding into authoritarianism.

Rather than asking whether the old order has failed, Deneen argues that liberalism has already run its course. The real question, in his view, is what comes next. For journalists, that means asking whether they can be more than content providers. Can they become civic anchors in an atomised age?

If the answer is yes, then journalism’s regime change may not mark its end but its renewal.

References & Further Reading

• Joshua Chaffin and Zusha Elinson, “The Ideological Gurus Battling for the Soul of Trump World,” Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2025.

• Patrick Deneen, “Why the MAGA-DOGE coalition will hold,” UnHerd, March 2025.

• Ian Ward, “‘I Don’t Want to Violently Overthrow the Government. I Want Something Far More Revolutionary’,” POLITICO, June 2023.

• Patrick Deneen, Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future, Penguin Random House, 2023.

• Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, Yale University Press, 2018.

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.

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Yet, here's where it gets interesting (and slightly terrifying): 53% of executives are already using generative AI regularly, while their middle managers are still figuring out ChatGPT. This top-down adoption means decisions about AI integration are being made in boardrooms, not newsrooms. Whether that's genius or disaster remains to be seen.

The Platform Insurgents Are Coming

While legacy media companies fumble with "AI strategy committees," nimble startups are building the future. Take LettsNews (a sister project) – they've created an AI newsroom that goes from story idea to quality published piece in minutes, not hours. Our team here at The Letts Journal uses it to support our special brand of punchy commentary and edgy insights.

Meanwhile another close to us, LettsCore, is solving the attribution crisis that's about to explode as AI-generated content floods the internet. Their blockchain-based approach to content provenance isn't just clever tech – it's survival gear for creators and smaller publishers who want to get paid in an AI world.

Together they have helped us peek into the Alice-like new media newsroom. And once you've seen it... try unseeing it!

These aren't incremental improvements; they're complete reimaginations of how media works. LettsNews lets you write once and distribute everywhere at the push of a button. What used to take newsroom teams hours now happens in minutes. It's not just efficiency – it's economic disruption with a capital D. Meaning we’ve got less excuse than ever not to bring you the best. Oh, wait...

The Great Media Job Scramble

Let's (excuse the brand pun) address the elephant in the newsroom: AI is coming for media jobs, hard. The World Economic Forum predicts 41% of employers will cut their workforce over the next five years due to AI automation. Writers, translators, and historians are at the top of the hit list. And that was before the latest and greatest from Trump 2.0!

But here's the twist nobody's talking about – while AI might displace 85 million jobs, it's creating 97 million new ones. The winners will be those who learn to dance with the machines, not against them. Think AI-augmented investigators, synthetic media specialists, and content authenticity experts.

Three Years from Now: The Crystal Ball

By 2028, expect AI-native media organisations operating with 70% fewer humans than today's outlets. They'll produce hyper-personalised content streams that make current recommendation algorithms look primitive. Virtual personalities will host shows and break news. Real-time event synthesis will provide comprehensive coverage within minutes of anything happening anywhere. Niche publications like ours could reinvent themselves and look like a giant in the land of poodles (or is it doodles).

The report reveals that traditional media companies have roughly 18 months to transform or become irrelevant. Those betting on gradual adoption while competitors go full-AI are playing checkers in a chess tournament. And we’re crap at both!

And it's not just AI transforming the media landscape. Newsrooms are shrinking and all those journalists and editors aren't disappearing. They're going out on their own creating their own brands and going direct to their readers. That means the AI revolution is becoming even more important as newsrooms become small direct to consumer businesses, journos are looking for the time and cost savings that AI will provide. So they can concentrate on their craft and their readers.

The Bottom Line for Forward Thinkers

The media revolution isn't coming – it's here, happening now, rewiring everything. The companies building AI-first, blockchain-verified, instantly-distributable content platforms are writing tomorrow's rules today. Smart money is backing innovative new AI and media platforms. Smarter people are learning these tools now rather than pretending they'll go away. Meaning even we might have a chance.

The question isn't whether AI will transform media – it's whether publications like ours and larger traditional media outfits will help write that transformation or watch it happen.

Time to pick a side. The algorithms are waiting.

This article first appeared at The Letts Journal. Meaning we're not dead yet...

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With temperatures soaring across Europe and America it seems like everyone is hitting the beach, mostly trying to get away from the forest wildfires. Here’s the ideal retro checklist for your perfect beach getaway.

The Ultimate Beach Checklist - ‘Tan for Ten’:

• “A bottle a day keeps the drought away!”. Given that multiple regions are reporting their droughts as the worst since records began, the water bottle has become the friskiest beach accessory. And the fluorescent blue DiorRiviera 2022 insulated water bottle could mark you out on those simmering beaches - saying style with an eco, survivalist edge. Apparently the bottle is a tribute to Mr Dior’s idyllic lifestyle. Also available in intense peony pink for that dreamy ‘his and hers’ look.

• The coolest beach towel, according to our friends at Elle Magazine, is the Wanderlust XL. If you love the beach and McDonald’s and hate the sand (??) this towel is for you. It’s sand resistant while at the same time quite handy for whacking wildfires or wrapping yourself when the flames overwhelm you. You could also go for the genuine fire blanket from Screwfix. Apparently, a fire retardant is handy at the hottest of beaches as it can put out those small starting fires. It even reflects heat from radiation meaning you can get up close and more personal than ever at the late beach barbecue or in case of fallout from the pesky missile attacks at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine.

• Forget wind breaks, bring along a green living wall and with just a smidgen of water (from your Dior bottle?) you can serve up a decent palate of foraged fresh salad and herbs for when we hit beach dystopia in earnest.

• Say goodbye to paddleboards, the new look navy seal landing gear from Halliburton will prove perfect for when the Chinese launch a mock invasion on your private beach.

• The ultimate beach bum accessory is ‘Safer Seas’, the SAS app (yes that SAS), that predicts when and where sewage pollution will appear. No more nasty surprises for the surfer in you who just wants to ‘keep it clean’.

• For parasols check out the ‘Sunny Life’ eight best beach umbrellas thanks to Elle Magazine (who should be sponsoring us by now!) and includes the Ombrellone Visconti for $848 - which is a snip for any mafioso hiding behind it. Equally you can fashion forward with Rihanna’s all in one solar powered music brolly with her latest album embedded - seriously? Well... Equally, mini parasols are the newest rage as scorching heat follows you literally everywhere - and sun screens no longer cut it. Hard core fashionistas can even pack this little gem into a tote so its always at hand! Equally, the Kung Fu Smith parasol kicks butt and can assist during ‘unprovoked’ beach landings.

• Thanks to Joe Biden and ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, the Rayban Aviator shades are the only game in town - as much as anything because we all want to come off as astronauts to shuttle-hop it to Mars (on a SpaceX that hopefully works by then) when earth scorches a few more degrees.

• The perfect beach book has to be the Claremont Institute’s handbook, which helps you get under the skin of the next slightly neo-fascist autocrat to take over your once democratic shores. And, for the quick read, check their magazine aptly named ‘The American Mind’(??!!).

• For tunes check out the greatest hits from Burning Spear which will make you cooler than Snoop Dogg because, let’s face it, retro reggae is back. And with a name like ‘Burning Spear’ it’s bound to bring out the Robinson Crusoe in you - very sustainable and green with a tinge of Ukraine supporting weaponry.

• Going eco? Hit the latest solar powered barbecue with the ‘Go Sun’ (where do these guys get these friggin’ brand names?!!) solar powered grill that apparently cooks your spread in just twenty minutes using “every drop of sunshine” ! It will also accessorise nicely with your eco bike, car and subscription to LettsSafari - which is not only the ultimate dinner party swag, but beats any number of streaming subscriptions who have dumped movies frfom the roster thanks to enshitification!

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If, on the other hand, you want to go sans accessory, as nature best intended, bring along the factor 5 billion because you’re going to need it.

And should you still get a little sun-scarred then the ‘Glory Oil’ from Eco Sonya Driver has your back. They describe it as: “The holy grail. This supernatural, organic cold pressed oil is a powerhouse of omegas and antioxidants. It looks and feels like pure liquid gold, going on the skin lightly and smoothly, to instantly plump and moisturise… A league of its own. Elite yet humble. TIP: it’s also perfect to use on cuticles, nails, body and hair!” And surely a snip at a little over $100 per bottle. Perfect for that Dubai party with the princes.

For the rest of us - stay indoors, stop using water, energy, plastics or any other summer lovely that has been conjured up for our doom - and wait for winter. After all, it has to be better - right?

Oh wait…

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Part of the Swedish capital, Stockholm, is set to become the “world’s largest wooden construction project,” according to its developer Atrium Ljungberg (try saying that after a couple), which will invest about $1.25 billion into the project. Proving even trees can be expensive.

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Sickla, an industrial area to the south of Stockholm’s centre once known for manufacturing diesel engines - is being redeveloped using cross-laminated timber, with the material being used in its buildings’ core, floors and walls.

The construction industry produces 37% of the world’s carbon emissions, so a few canny Swede's decided that building using wood is one way to reduce the sector’s climate impact - ignoring the fact that trees remove carbon better than pretty much anything else on land.

According to certain slightly dubious sources, the next level urban game, beyond parkour, could be a side hustle in 'accidental' urban wildfire'ing. Mind you, it can get pretty cold in Sweden, so a bit of extra warming might not be so unpopular...

Nearly 70% of Swedish territory is made up of forest, and the country has used timber in construction for many years. “We have a close cultural connection to the forest,” said Oskar Norelius, lead architect at White Arkitker - ignoring the fact that more of these wooden cities might bust that connection for good.

"People seem to love wood. Visitors to Sweden’s 20-story Sara Kulturhus building have been seen hugging its timber columns"(??), added Oskar Norelius, who Norman Foster seems to get a bit twitchy about. "We do it with steel and glass, while his could go down with a flick of my (match)stick...". Foster went on to mutter something about Grenfell which we thought better not to repeat.

This bold new plan is looking to defy Sweden's recent property crash, while the plan to expand the City's subway to the new development could drive Stockholm's eco ambitions further off the charts.

Putting all this aside, we applaud (from a safe distance) the country's new found ambition for grand urban plans with a tinge of 'green'. It's certainly a novel approach to global warming.

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.

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The signs of change have been brewing for a while, though most VCs have been understandably busy perfecting their Patagonia vest collections. While the industry has spent the last decade mastering the art of "adding value beyond capital" at countless panel discussions, LettsGroup has quietly built something that actually does it - and some. Their new Investor Dashboard doesn't just promise to give investors a "pit view" into portfolio operations - it suggests the traditional GP/LP model might be ready for its most exciting upgrade since the invention of the term sheet.

"Using the Investor Dashboard could make any private company investor, small or big, individual or fund, pro or pro-am, look as red hot value added as Marc Andreessen."

Consider the delightful mathematics of modern venture capital: a typical VC partner might juggle 8-12 portfolio companies, dedicating perhaps 10-15 hours per month to each if they're particularly organised. That's roughly 120 hours spread across a dozen companies, or about 3% of their working time per investment. Meanwhile, LettsGroup's AI can analyse market dynamics, craft go-to-market strategies, and stress-test exit scenarios around the clock across unlimited portfolios. It's like comparing a horse-drawn carriage to a Tesla - both will get you there, but one makes you look a little foolish in 2025.

The traditional venture model has always been charmingly human in its approach. VCs raise substantial funds, collect their 2% management fees, and then divide their time between raising the next fund and graciously accepting credit for their founders' brilliant successes at industry gatherings. The actual "building" part - the messy, exciting bit that creates real value - has largely been the domain of entrepreneurs who receive capital, a business card, and then work their magic. It's rather like hiring a personal trainer who takes 20% of your gym membership but only shows up to watch you lift weights.

LettsGroup's dashboard offers an intriguing complement to this time-honoured approach. Instead of replacing those valuable quarterly board meetings, imagine enhancing them with real-time strategic insights. Rather than choosing between "value-add" and efficiency, picture accessing institutional-grade venture building tools for the price of a decent bottle of wine. The Innov@te™ Agent doesn't need business class flights or three-hour wagyu dinners to deliver its insights - though we suspect it might appreciate the occasional software update.

The implications go well beyond simple efficiency gains. Traditional VCs have built their reputations on pattern recognition - the invaluable ability to spot trends, identify promising founders, and navigate market cycles with style. But here's where it gets interesting: AI excels at pattern recognition too, minus some of those endearing human quirks like inexplicable fondness for twenty-something Stanford dropouts building "Uber for X" companies (though to be fair, some of those did work out rather well).

What's particularly exciting is that LettsGroup's approach suggests we're entering an era where capital becomes genuinely collaborative. Instead of passive investors hoping, perhaps somewhat naively, their chosen entrepreneurs can navigate the journey successfully, we're looking at active capital that can analyse, strategise, and optimise alongside human insight. It's the difference between owning a racehorse and owning a self-driving Formula 1 car that happens to print money.

The pricing strategy is elegantly disruptive in its simplicity. At £119 per month, LettsGroup has essentially democratised what traditional VCs charge significant sums to provide - mostly around 20% of your company. It's venture capital's streaming moment - why pay premium prices for individual access when you can tap into a comprehensive toolkit for the cost of a nice dinner out? Except in this case, that dinner usually comes with unsolicited advice about your choice of casual wear.

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Naturally, traditional VCs will rightfully point out that relationships matter deeply, that human judgement remains irreplaceable, that founders need mentorship alongside algorithms. They're absolutely right - there's tremendous value in human insight, emotional intelligence, and the occasional well-timed golf course revelation. The exciting part is imagining how much more powerful that human value becomes when amplified by intelligent tools rather than competing with them.

The real opportunity isn't whether AI will transform venture capital - it's how quickly the industry will embrace this evolution to become even more valuable to entrepreneurs. LettsGroup has essentially built a sophisticated co-pilot for venture building, and the early adopters are already buckling up. Traditional VCs can evolve into something even more genuinely impactful, combining their irreplaceable human insights with powerful new capabilities.

The future, as LettsGroup's CEO Philip Letts suggests, belongs to those who transform "passive capital into a builder of strategic value." The rest will have some fascinating conversations with their LPs about how they're planning to stay ahead of the curve, armed with compelling stories about their evolving value proposition and increasingly sophisticated approaches to portfolio support.

The LettsGroup AI VentureFactory Investor Dashboard is available now at letts.group/pricing . Traditional venture capital remains available wherever thoughtful people gather to discuss synergies over artisanal salads just off Market Street - though some of them might have some exciting new tools in their toolkit.

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.

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Now, Silicon Valley bros have been romanticising “Founder Mode” longer than they’ve been misusing the word “disrupt.” Ever since Paul Graham turned entrepreneurship into a spiritual journey (equal parts Y Combinator and midlife crisis), everyone's been searching for the elusive gene that separates unicorn-riding founders from mere mortals with MBAs and Google Calendars.

Here’s the kicker: founder-led companies are valued 40% higher by Series C than those led by "professional managers" - you know, the folks who love org charts more than actual innovation. Founders make it rain. Managers make spreadsheets.

But here’s where the plot twist gets juicy: Women founders aren’t just crashing the party - they’re DJing, redecorating, and rewriting the playlist. Studies show women are over 20% more likely than men to build profitable businesses early on. Apparently, the startup secret sauce may contain… estrogen? (Science is still checking.)

Need proof? Sara Blakely transformed an “I-hate-my-underwear” moment into Spanx and a billion-dollar empire. That’s founder magic: turning wardrobe malfunctions into global empires. Meanwhile, Lisa Su pulled AMD out of tech purgatory and dropkicked it straight into relevance, while Kimberly Bryant created Black Girls Code, because she didn’t see enough Black girls in tech and decided, “Fine, I’ll build my own pipeline.”

And then there’s Fei-Fei Li, who taught machines to see . Like, actually see . She's not just breaking glass ceilings - she’s reprogramming the building.

But just as women start soaring, in comes the buzzkill: investors start pressuring them to hire “real” managers - a.k.a., the corporate equivalent of a chaperone - at nearly twice the rate they do men. Translation? You can build the spaceship, but they’d really prefer someone else fly it. Someone… with khakis and a LinkedIn Premium account.

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So what’s actually in this magical Founder DNA cocktail? Let’s break it down:

• Unlimited Self-Belief: 89% of unicorn founders have it. The other 11% are just incredibly good at faking it on Zoom.

• No Backup Plan: 78% of successful founders admit they had zero Plan B. Because nothing lights a fire under your hustle like the looming threat of moving back in with your parents.

• Extreme Rejection Endurance: The average successful female founder hears “no” more often than a toddler asking for candy at bedtime.

But here’s the real secret weapon: problem-solving superpowers and trauma alchemy. As Arianna Huffington puts it, “There’s a hidden blessing in the most traumatic things we go through.” Translation: great founders don’t just bounce back - they bounce forward, pivot, and raise a Series A.

Look at Reshma Saujani, who saw the gender gap in tech and created Girls Who Code, or Whitney Wolfe Herd, who turned her own toxicexperience in tech into Bumble - a dating app where women make the first move. (Take that, patriarchy.)

And those “professional managers” hired to clean things up? More often than not, they slow things down. 67% of founders report that innovation tanks after hiring big-company execs. Why? Because you can’t ask someone whose superpower is building corporate hierarchies to suddenly become a creative renegade. That’s like hiring a librarian to run a rave.

Luckily, tech is on the founder’s side now. Thanks to AI-powered tools like LettsGroup's AI VentureFactory, you can now build a functioning startup for under $100K - down from the previous $2 million sticker shock. That means more control, less dilution, and fewer awkward “Can we bring in someone more seasoned?” conversations.

So here’s the truth bomb for 2025: The future belongs to founders who stay founders - especially women. The old “hand it off to the grown-ups” playbook is as outdated as your college email address. Today, it's about using technology to scale smart, stay lean, and protect that glorious, chaotic, visionary energy that made your startup shine in the first place.

Because in the end, Founder DNA doesn’t just stand for deoxyribo-whatever. It stands for Do. Not. Abandon. your instincts. They got you here. They’ll get you there. Whether “there” is unicorn status or just an epic exit and a beachfront hammock with Wi-Fi.

Now go forth, you brilliant chaos architect. The punch bowl is yours.

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.

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The Anti-Trump Wave That Wasn't (Entirely)

Remember when political pundits confidently declared that Trump's return to the White House would trigger a global rightward lurch? Well, those predictions aged about as well as milk left on a Mar-a-Lago patio in August.

In Canada, Mark Carney's Liberals pulled off what analysts called "one of the widest rebounds on record in any democracy," snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Just months earlier, polls had the Conservatives cruising toward a landslide. But then something peculiar happened: Trump launched his trade war, threatening America's northern neighbour with tariffs and vague allusions to "annexation" that sent Canadians frantically googling, "Can I build an igloo on the moon?".

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"Vote for us," the Liberals essentially said, "because we're not those guys who remind you of that guy." And Canadians, eyeing the chaos south of their border, nodded in collective agreement. The Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre even lost his own seat - a humiliation eerily mirrored weeks later in Australia.

Down under, Anthony Albanese's Labor Party defied political gravity by increasing its majority - the first Australian government to do so after a first term since World War II. The Liberal Party's Peter Dutton had spent months adopting Trump-adjacent policies, including a promise to create an Australian version of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency ("DOGE"), and campaigning on culture war issues. One Liberal senator even used the phrase "make Australia great again," apparently missing the memo that originality matters in politics.

As Trump's tariffs threatened Australian exports and his erratic foreign policy raised eyebrows across the Pacific, voters looked at Dutton's rightward lurch and decisively said "no thanks." with the polite firmness of someone declining their third Vegemite sandwich. Like his Canadian counterpart, Dutton too lost his own seat. It's almost as if voters were sending a message written in electoral neon: "We've seen this show before, and we're not buying tickets to the sequel." Or at least not until we all see Trump's egg breaking leading to reduced inflation and soaring stock indexes. Oh wait...

In both Canada and Australia, the Trump effect didn’t just hurt the conservatives, it actively rescued struggling incumbents who had been widely expected to suffer from midterm malaise. The Trump brand of bombast and grievance politics proved wildly out of sync with the understated pragmatism voters were craving.

But Wait - The UK Plot Twist

Just when this narrative seemed comfortably established - Trump pushes America right, the rest of world recoils left - the United Kingdom decided to complicate matters.

In early May's local elections, Nigel Farage's Reform UK party stormed to victory, winning a parliamentary by-election by a nail-biting six votes, claiming two mayoralties, and taking control of several councils. The party placed first overall, with an unprecedented 41% of available seats. Meanwhile, both Labour and the Conservatives suffered historic losses.

So why didn't the anti-Trump effect manifest in Britain? Several theories present themselves.

First, Farage - despite being a long-time Trump supporter - carefully distanced himself from some of the American president's more controversial positions. Recognising that Trump's tariffs and Ukraine policies were unpopular with British voters, he strategically avoided embracing them. Unlike his counterparts in Canada and Australia, Farage understood that selective Trumpism sells better than the wholesale variety. Plus, getting kneecapped on X by Musk might have boosted Farage with every non-Tesla obsessed driver in the UK.

Second, the UK local elections were primarily a protest vote against establishment parties in traditionally conservative areas. Labour, despite its landslide general election victory just months earlier, had implemented unpopular policies like cutting winter fuel payments for the elderly - a move about as popular as suggesting Buckingham Palace be converted into a Trump-branded mini-golf course. Even though, on second thought, that might actually not be such a bad idea. The Conservatives, still reeling from their 2024 electoral collapse, offered no compelling alternative stumbling around the political landscape with all the direction and purpose of a roomba with a drinking problem.

Third, Britain's electoral system is in flux. For the first time in modern history, the combined Labour-Conservative vote share fell below 50%, signalling a fracturing of the traditional two-party system more dramatic than the crack in Liberty Bell. Reform benefited from this fragmentation - the average winning party's vote share was just 40.7%, meaning three in five voters didn't support the winning candidate in their ward. Democracy: where you can be deeply unpopular and still win! (Trump nods vigorously.)

Reform UK didn’t so much mimic Trump as localise him: anti-immigration, anti-“Westminster elite,” and full-throated in its appeals to national identity and working-class grievances. It was a textbook case of the UK electorate following America’s populist mood swings, this time by delivering a shock local mandate for Farage’s insurgents.

The Freedom of the Press Paradox

One common thread emerges when examining these electoral outcomes: voters seem increasingly allergic to politicians who threaten democratic institutions and norms, breaking out in democratic hives at the mere suggestion of undermining the press. Trump's attacks on journalism, his "anti-woke" agenda (which appears to mean staying asleep to actual problems), and his authoritarian tendencies appear to be serving as cautionary tales for electorates elsewhere, like a political version of those graphic anti-smoking ads.

In both Canada and Australia, conservative politicians who aped Trump's rhetoric about "hate media" or borrowed his culture war playbook found themselves rejected by voters who had a front-row seat to the American experiment. It's like watching someone get food poisoning from the shrimp cocktail at a buffet and then deciding maybe you'll go with the salad instead. The implicit message seemed to be: "We've watched what happens when you go down that road, and we'd rather not, thanks. Also, we prefer our democracy without a side of autocracy."

Even in the UK, where Reform UK succeeded, Farage was careful to present a more palatable version of populism - one that maintained just enough distance from Trump's most controversial positions to avoid triggering the same immunological response. It's populism with a monocle and a cup of tea rather than a red hat and a hamburger.

The Global Political Immune System

Perhaps what we're witnessing is a kind of political immune response, which is far more effective than the human immune system since it doesn't involve actually catching the disease first. Like a body that develops antibodies after exposure to a virus, democracies that observe Trump's America up close are developing resistance to his particular brand of politics faster than a teenager develops resistance to parental advice.

This doesn't mean these countries are immune to populism or right-wing policies - clearly they're not, just as being immune to measles doesn't protect you from chicken pox or that weird rash you got at your cousin's destination wedding. Or wild poisonous mushrooms hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Victoria. But they seem increasingly capable of distinguishing between conservative governance and authoritarianism-lite, like a wine connoisseur who can tell the difference between a fine cabernet and grape juice that's been left in the sun too long.

As Trump pushes America further right, he may be inadvertently inoculating other democracies against his most extreme tendencies, like a vaccine made from pure ego and spray tan. The irony is almost Shakespearean: in his quest to "Make America Great Again," he might be making other countries more resistant to precisely the political movement he champions. It's like trying to sell ice to Eskimos and accidentally teaching them to build air conditioners instead.

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Of course, this theory has its limits - as the UK results demonstrate. But even there, Reform UK's success came when it strategically distanced itself from Trump's most controversial positions, like someone claiming to love pizza while carefully picking off all the toppings.

The Final Act Still Unwritten

As we navigate the rest of 2025, the interplay between Trump's America and the world's democracies will continue to evolve with all the predictability of a cat on a keyboard. Will more countries shift leftward in reaction to American politics? Will populist parties learn to modulate their Trumpism to avoid triggering voter antibodies? Or will entirely new political configurations emerge, perhaps involving sentient AI running for office on a platform of "at least I'm not human"?

The only certainty is uncertainty - and perhaps the knowledge that in politics, as in Shakespeare, the most entertaining developments are often the least expected, like finding out the villain was actually wearing a mask the whole time, except in Trump's case, it's just another layer of bronzer.

Trump may have written the script for American populism, but the rest of the world is busy creating its own adaptations, some faithful to the original, others decidedly not - like when Hollywood remakes foreign films but adds explosions and a questionable love interest. I guess though if Trump's new tariff-driven, made in America only model works then we all know which way it is likely to go - bye bye Starmer!

In this global political theatre, Trump remains centre stage in America, hogging the spotlight and occasionally forgetting his lines. But for now, the rest of the world seems to be deciding that while his performance makes for compelling viewing - like a car crash involving clowns - they'd rather not bring the show to their own countries. Unless, of course, it's a carefully edited version with the most controversial scenes left on the cutting room floor, along with most of the orange makeup and all of the covfefe. Or, if their economies are so stuffed that anything will look better - particularly one that includes a star spangled banner like in the latest Bob Dylan remake.

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.

As our canny mothership kicks off its highly secretive AI themed Demo Day this week, we thought it might be a good time to look at how NOT to use AI - first up, in US politics.

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After all, in a world where politicians still struggle with email passwords and the concept of "turning it off and on again," we've somehow entrusted humanity's future to artificial intelligence. As the White House fumbles through its 17th executive order on AI regulation (each contradicting the previous sixteen), here's our definitive guide to what absolutely NOT to do with your shiny new AI tools.

Ask It to Write Your Political Campaign

Nothing says "I'm presidential material" quite like having a robot craft your vision for America. Trump's new AI-generated slogan "Making America Phenomenally Exceptional Again With Huge Success" raised eyebrows not just for its verbosity but for the footnote that read "Insert regional pander here." Meanwhile, three senators have already blamed "algorithmic anomalies" for campaign promises that mentioned giving tax breaks to species not yet discovered.

Let It Handle Your Dating Life

Representative Johnson thought his AI assistant sending automated flirty responses to constituents was "efficient government." His wife, divorce attorney, and ethics committee disagreed. The resulting congressional hearing featured the immortal line: "I did not have textual relations with that algorithm."

Use It for Medical Advice in Congress

The Senate Health Committee's brilliant idea to use AI to draft healthcare legislation resulted in a bill that prescribed horse dewormer for economic inflation and suggested "bleeding with leeches" as a solution to the national debt. Remarkably, it passed the House with only minor amendments.

Rely On It for Fact-Checking

When the Supreme Court cited "ChatGPT vs. The Reasonable Person" in a landmark decision, legal scholars noted the case not only didn't exist but featured a plaintiff who was literally made of maths. Justice Roberts later clarified he thought he was using "one of those Google things."

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Trust It With National Safety Protocols

After the Pentagon's new AI security system locked generals out of nuclear facilities for "suspicious behaviour" (bringing coffee before 6 AM), officials had to explain to the public why a Post-it note with "password123" was stuck to a missile silo door. The Defence Secretary's statement that "even our enemies wouldn't guess something that obvious" did little to reassure NATO allies.

Allow It to Manage Your Social Media

The British PM's diplomatic crisis began when his AI assistant, instructed to "be more relatable," responded to the French President's formal trade proposal with: "New phone, who dis? LOL." Westminster insiders report the subsequent trade deal now inexplicably includes 10,000 tons of baguettes and a clause written entirely in emoji.

As we careen toward a future where algorithms make our decisions, write our laws, and apparently select our national anthems (Congress is still recovering from the AI's suggestion to replace "The Star-Spangled Banner" with "Baby Shark"), perhaps the greatest wisdom is knowing when to simply unplug the damn thing. Perhaps a cautionary tale for us all.

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While other companies solve boring problems like antibiotic resistance, Colossal dared to ask: What if Ice Age elephants could make a comeback and also be really photogenic on Instagram? And VCs? They answered - with checkbooks. Presumably because they like Steve Jobs, Disney, Pixar and Ice Age aka super-kitch movies - probably in that order.

Colossal isn't just re-engineering woolly mammoths for nostalgia; it's building a platform for species de-extinction™. Their goal? Bring back the mammoth in the name of climate change, conservation, and - eventually - mammoth-themed NFTs. Investors include Paris Hilton (yes, that one), Peter Thiel (of course), and top-tier VC firms captivated by climate-resilient pachyderms with venture-backed cool factor. As one VC explained: "It's the perfect mix - climate, biotech, storytelling, and licensing opportunities [with Disney/Pixar/Paris H]."

The New Scientific Method (VC Edition) follows a simple formula: First, identify a problem science hasn't solved - because it probably shouldn't. Who needs food security when you can bring back Ice Age animals? Next, reframe it as a planetary imperative only Silicon Valley can fix. Climate change? Sure. But how do we leverage genetic de-extinction to make it cool?

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Then, deploy high-risk buzzwords like ' de-extinction,' 'CRISPR platforms,' and 'DNA-as-a-Service' in your pitch deck alongside stock footage of a mammoth walking majestically through foggy tundra. Fourth, secure eight-figure funding before any proof of concept . In venture capital, promise attracts millions. Just ensure your founders are old enough (because Mammoths aren't young), charismatic, and have a track record of failing upward.

Finally , announce partnerships with celebrity conservationists, ideally ones who once DJed at Coachella. This is what elevates your pitch from “idea” to “movement.” Who needs a scientific consensus when Paris Hilton is backing it, surely that's proof enough of global impact potential.

Gone are the days when biologists drove the future of genetic science. Today, real progress is guided by founders with impeccable storytelling instincts, TEDx-ready charisma, and the ability to say “existential risk” while holding a glass of biodynamic wine.

Traditional scientists have raised concerns that de-extincting species could create ecological imbalances, undermine current conservation efforts, or lead to an eventual Netflix docuseries titled “Oops: The Mammoth Uprising.” But in venture capital, concerns are just another form of early user feedback. Colossal's founder explained, "This isn't just about the mammoth. It's about building a platform for reversing extinction. Imagine choosing your own ecosystem!" And if that ecosystem includes a saber-toothed tiger sponsored by Red Bull? Even better.

What makes Colossal particularly exciting to investors isn’t just the potential to reshape entire ecosystems - it’s the optics. Unlike boring biotech startups working on invisible molecules that save lives, Colossal offers visual deliverables : elephant-shaped genetic marvels stomping across Arctic landscapes like nature’s original influencers. VCs dream of the ultimate exit: a multibillion-dollar IPO, a SPAC merger with Disney's Animal Kingdom, or an acquisition by Meta for virtual mammoths in the metaverse.

As one investor put it: "Colossal isn't just a company - it's a brand with tusks."

In the end, Colossal perfectly embodies modern venture capitalism: high-concept, high-risk, and shrouded in buzzwords like "radical impact" and "synthetic biodiversity." Because in 2025, it's not about solving today's problems. It's about solving yesterday's problems using tomorrow's tech - preferably with a creature that went extinct before humans had even invented shoes.

So the next time you see a massive, shaggy behemoth wearing an Apple AirTag, don't panic. That's just the future of innovation - brought to you by Series C funding and the firm belief that anything is possible if you have a great narrative and the Hemsworths on your cap table.

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.

It's as if we've mastered the world's most exquisite recipes but developed an elaborate system of second thoughts about opening the restaurant. Our innovations sit like Michelin-starred meals served only in the kitchen, brilliant but starved of the investment, courage, and that essential sprinkle of chutzpah needed to bring them to the dining public.

The European approach to innovation follows a predictable choreography: first, develop brilliant technological foundations (we excel here). Next, consider all potential implications with thoroughness that would impress medieval scholars. Then establish comprehensive regulatory frameworks that anticipate every conceivable consequence. Finally - and this is where we truly shine - watch as faster-moving competitors scale similar concepts while we prepare excellent papers explaining exactly what happened.

Our investment conversations have their own distinctive rhythm. While Silicon Valley VC's are playing "who can fund the next trillion-dollar company before breakfast," European investors often engage in thoughtful but momentum-busting inquiries: "Could you explain your path to profitability again, please? And have you considered the implications for municipal service providers in mid-sized Belgian cities?"

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This caution extends to leadership as well. Europe hasn't yet produced tech visionaries with the ambitious risk profile of their American counterparts. Our entrepreneurial landscape favours steady growth over moonshots. It favours creating solid technologies with strong foundations but hesitating to pursue the market-dominating platforms that define the digital age. Many of our brilliant minds have built respectable careers in European branches of global tech companies, focused more on regional adaptation than core innovation, becoming excellent translators rather than original authors.

Four distinctive challenges amplify this dynamic. Our venture capital as percentage of GDP remains significantly lower than America's. It's like trying to build a championship football club while spending a fraction of what competitors invest. So, not Chelsea FC.

On talent development, we're staring into an 8-million-person ICT skills gap by 2030. That's not just a gap but practically a skills Grand Canyon. Market complexity means scaling across Europe still requires navigating 27 different contexts, akin to playing 4D chess while competitors enjoy checkers. And our tech ecosystem has developed dependencies in key infrastructure, particularly in cloud computing - essentially renting our digital foundations rather than owning them.

But the story needn't end with a resigned shrug and another academic paper. New approaches are emerging that offer a distinctly European path forward - systematic, thoughtful, and potentially transformative.

Take platforms like LettsGroup's AI VentureFactory , which represents something quietly revolutionary: bringing methodical precision to the chaotic business of innovation. Their approach aims to double conventional venture success rates from the traditional 1 in 10 to a more reassuring 1 in 5, creating a more predictable innovation pathway that aligns with European sensibilities without sacrificing ambition. They also claim up to 90% lower cost-to-build startups.

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Their Innov@te venture building process - with its seven stages, 49 steps, and hundreds of sub-steps - might sound like the kind of structure only Europeans could love. Yet this comprehensive framework brings welcome architecture to the inherently messy business of building breakthrough companies. It's innovation with guardrails rather than guardrails against innovation.

Can Europe embrace calculated risk-taking while maintaining our foundational values? The question isn't whether we should abandon caution for recklessness - it's whether we can find a balance that turns our world-class research into world-class businesses. If we discover that sweet spot between deliberation and action, we might create a distinctive European approach to technological leadership. An approach built on solid foundations rather than hype cycles. And one that is not like a bunny in the headlights to 'move fast and break things'.

After all, the world doesn't need another Silicon Valley. It needs the uniquely European revolution that's been simmering in our labs and universities for decades finally served to the world, not just admired in the kitchen.

This article is based on an analysis by LettsGroup.

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1929, Thursday the 24th of October: This will be remembered as Black Thursday. Following an already worrying drop of 4.5% the previous evening, the NYSE would see it's first ever significant market crash. 11% of the market value was wiped out upon market open. A decade, known as the Roaring Twenties, had been operating on the assumption that the stock market only goes up - the original "stonks" mentality - rampant speculation would have no consequences. It was this, that many historians highlight as the foundation of the collapse.

Little discussed was the impact of the previous few days in the US Senate where apparently, the finest minds go to die. Initial Senate votes were held on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, a brilliant piece of protectionist legislation. Nobody had seriously contemplated such protectionists policies since the 1890s, presumably because someone back then had actually read an economics textbook. Of course, the Washington experts confidently predicted its inevitable demise. Then, on October 23rd—just hours before Black Thursday would kick off Wall Street's meltdown—an amendment mysteriously passed with support from several senators who had previously opposed it.

Apparently, nothing inspires market panic quite like Congress suddenly changing its mind about trade policy. This legislative flip-flop helped trigger the market volatility that plunged America into the 12-year economic nightmare known as the Great Depression . Who says politicians can't get things done when there's an economy to ruin?

If we can learn anything from the Great Depression, it is that the Smoot-Hawley Act, passed into law swiftly at its start, exacerbated rather than alleviated the disaster. The tariffs instituted following the market crash crushed American exports, and led to conditions that saw wasteful agricultural overgrowth resulting in the Great Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

Lesson One - for a market crash: Tariffs introduce volatility, but even worse, they exacerbate the nation's ability to escape resulting depressions.

Then it all broke. The crash was the greatest the US had ever seen. Worse than even 1929. The Dow collapsed 22%, the greatest ever single day fall. The desperation to sell overwhelmed the NYSE's yet untested mechanical and computerised systems. Throughout the day there were 195 trading halts or delays. Some orders to sell took more than an hour to process, feeling more like an average day at a British train station.

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The government couldn't allow this to happen again (the stock market crash, not the train thing) - so they came up with a solution, a new one, no tariffs, no sweeping social programs and Keynsian Economics, they rigged the system. Lose 7% of value in a day? You're not allowed to, go sit down for 15 minutes. Still won't stop falling? Hit 13% and you put the market in the corner for another 15 minutes. Market's still not behaving, loses 20% of value in a day? Actually that's illegal now, all trading will stop for the rest of the day. Capitalism's invisible hand apparently needs a time-out occasionally.

Lesson Two: Selling Stocks is unpatriotic - so make it illegal to do so if people see 20% of losses in a single day. Maybe they should do the same with selling your Tesla! Nothing says "free market" quite like "actually, you're not free to sell right now."

2000, Monday the 3rd of April: Dot Com Companies were all the rage. The Market just could not get enough of these new companies like Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Beenz. They didn't seem to slow down, and they didn't seem capable of losing. They were nevertheless very capable of losing money. This new boom market was ripe for consolidation. Dot Coms were merging like it was mating season, and nothing was going to stop them - certainly not profitability requirements.

Aha! Antitrust was going to stop them. Referring to the Sherman Act a federal judge declared Microsoft a monopoly, and it instantly lost 15% of its value. The Nasdaq, the fancy new fund tracking the Dot Coms, collapsed 8%. A week later the Nasdaq was down 25%. The collapse continued for 2 and a half years. By the end the NYSE had lost $5 Trillion in value. The Nasdaq had been wiped out by 78%.

In the years since the trough of the Dot Com collapse stabilisation has been ensured through the allowance of consolidation. Now Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Meta can all be monopolies, and judges have gone from ruling companies in violation of the Sherman antitrust act to insisting "Success is not illegal". Problem Solved.

Lesson Three: Monopoly is no longer a board game, it's an aspiration - and we've all agreed to call it "market efficiency" instead.

2008, Monday, the 15th of September: It had been nearly a year of tumult and uncertainty in the US economy, as the issue of Subprime loans seemed to just grow and grow and grow- like a cancer that Wall Street insisted was just a "healthy growth opportunity". It had never been this bad though. Lehman Brothers, one of America's premier financial institutions, declared bankruptcy. Merrill Lynch was purchased by Bank of America to avoid the same fate.

The Dow collapsed 4.5%, it had already dropped 20% from it's peak the previous year. In a month the Dow would see a further drop of 18% in just a week. The S&P fell 20% in that same time frame. A year later the market would bottom out 56% lower than it's peak in 2007. The global economy would experience the Great Recession until early 2010. Recovery was ongoing until 2013.

Lesson Four: Socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor - the American Way 2.0.

Today: Markets continue to bleed. President Donald J. Trump is taking his trade policy from Peter Navarro, or is that Ron Vara? A rally briefly looked possible on Monday afternoon when a misunderstanding left the markets confused and soaring up 3% on it's previous losses - demonstrating that sometimes the best thing a government can do for the market is to be briefly misunderstood.

The confusion only lasted a little while after the government insisted it would be pursuing tariffs to the death. The market quickly contracted. Monday's rally was further killed by the administration making it's 104% updated tariffs on China official, and the Dow is now down 12% on the year, the S&P down 15%, the Nasdaq down 20%. The US's solution? Tariffs, Tax cuts, and advertising purchasing of stock at a depressed level as a patriotic act. It's good to see we're learning. Nothing says "I've studied economic history" quite like "let's try Smoot-Hawley again, but with MORE ZEROS!"

If history has taught us anything, it's that we've learned absolutely nothing. Tariffs didn't work in 1929, but they'll definitely work in 2025 because... reasons. Trading halts didn't prevent the 2008 crash, but they're still our first line of defense. Monopolies were bad until they became our tech darlings. And bailouts? They're only socialism when they help ordinary people.

So get ready to dust off grandma's recipe for water pie. At least this time around, we'll have TikTok videos to show us how to make it properly.

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.

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Welcome to the great job redistribution of the 2020's, where traditional employment isn't so much dying as it's being dramatically reorganised.

The Corporate Downsizing Acceleration Program

Major corporations, always eager to trim expenses that come with pesky human needs like healthcare and ergonomic chairs, are embracing AI with the enthusiasm of a CEO discovering tax loopholes. By 2027, analysts predict up to 30% of mid-level knowledge work positions could be automated or significantly augmented by AI systems.

Financial departments will shrink as AI handles everything from forecasting to expense categorisation. Marketing teams will witness their creative brainstorming sessions replaced by prompt engineering workouts. Even HR departments, ironically, will implement AI systems to determine which humans are no longer required. Let the robots decide!

The McKinseys and Deloittes of the world are already salivating over the prospect of selling "workforce optimisation strategies" (corporate-speak for "replacing people with algorithms").

Enter the Solopreneur: Renaissance Worker for the AI Age

As corporate jobs evaporate, something fascinating is happening: the rise of the AI-amplified solopreneur. These digital mercenaries are discovering they can deliver work previously requiring entire departments.

Today's solopreneur isn't just outsourcing tasks to virtual assistants in the Philippines – they're commanding an army of specialised AI tools. A single marketing consultant can now generate campaign concepts, write copy across multiple channels, design graphics, schedule posts, analyse performance, and optimise in real-time – all while wearing pajama pants.

The modern solopreneur workflow resembles a digital orchestra conductor more than a traditional freelancer. They bounce between specialised AI tools – using one system for ideation, another for content generation, a third for design work, and yet another for client communication and management.

The New Essential Toolkit

Success in this brave new world requires mastering platforms that supercharge solo operators. Services like LettsGroup's AI VentureFactory provide integrated systems where solopreneurs can develop concepts, validate markets, build working prototypes, and even scale operations without traditional team members. They also have a library of the hottest, coolest AI agents. Kind of like James Bond for doing cool shiz without actually having to do it yourself. James-AI does it for you.

The skills currency of tomorrow isn't knowing how to use Excel or PowerPoint – it's understanding prompt engineering, AI workflow design, and the art of human quality control. The most successful solopreneurs will be those who can identify AI's blind spots and provide the creative spark, emotional intelligence, and strategic thinking that algorithms still struggle with.

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"OMG, will my kids become WALL-E?"

It raises some fascinating questions about the starting point for the graduates of tomorrow - solopreneurship or old style, soon to be expunged, corporate graduate programmes? How should I be advising my kids? And where's the training manual for them becoming WALL-E in real life?

The Mixed-Reality Future

This isn't some utopian vision where everyone becomes a fulfilled digital nomad posting Instagram stories from Bali. The transition will be bumpy. Many corporate workers will find themselves thrust into solopreneurship without preparation. Income stability will become as predictable as cryptocurrency prices. But the reality is it's already happening, whether we know it / accept it or not.

But for those who adapt quickly, the possibilities are extraordinary – true independence, multiple income streams, and the ability to scale their impact far beyond what was previously possible for any individual.

The future of work isn't about humans versus machines. It's about humans with machines versus humans without them.

Waiver: This article was written by a human that we think might or might not have gotten the smallest amount of help from a smallish robot. Seeing as we can never be 100% sure, we thought we should cover our butt just in case.

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.