The Way You Make Me Feel

Wear Adidas to Handle Important Business in the City

EDITOR’S WORDS The most laborious part of producing the Sunday Blender used to be getting the images. I need to Google search for the image, find one that fits the story, visit the original web site containing the raw format of the image, download it, rename it, convert it into jpg, adjust its dimensions to keep its size in check, and finally embed it into the article. I gotta do this for 20~25 times for a typical issue. It’s not rocket science but just tedious. Curating news stories is fun. Jumping through all these hoops for images is anything but fun. That’s where good old Claude came in to help. Two weeks ago I used Claude Code (then Opus 4.7 model) to write a bash script that takes an image link as input and automatically handles everything else in seconds - downloading, renaming, conversion, and resizing. This automation probably saves me 1-2 hours and allows me to spend more time focusing on the intellectual part of the publishing. It’s a God-sent. Make publishing fun again! TECH Spark [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/spark.jpg] On June 1, 2026, at a tech conference in Taipei, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled a new PC processor made alongside Microsoft, called the RTX Spark superchip. Nvidia’s chips already power most of the world’s AI, but this is its push into everyday laptops and desktops. The chip combines a graphics processor and a main processor on one piece of silicon, designed to run AI helpers directly on your computer instead of through the internet. “This is going to be the new PC,” Huang said, arguing that instead of clicking and typing, people will simply ask their computer to do things. The RTX Spark arrives this fall in Windows machines from Microsoft, Dell, HP, ASUS, Lenovo and MSI. Rocket [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/rocket.jpg] On May 28, 2026, a Blue Origin rocket exploded in a giant fireball during a ground test in Florida. The company was test-firing the engines of its New Glenn rocket while it was secured to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral when the rocket erupted into flames. No one was hurt, but the blast destroyed the rocket and badly damaged Blue Origin’s only working launch pad. Blue Origin is the space company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. New Glenn is its only rocket able to reach orbit, and NASA had hired it to help carry equipment to the Moon. Repairing the launch pad could take until 2028, throwing those plans into doubt. Luce [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/luce.jpg] On May 25, 2026, Ferrari revealed its first-ever fully electric car, the Luce, Italian for “light.” It was a big departure for the famous sports car maker: a four-door, five-seat family car priced at €550,000, developed with help from former Apple design chief Jony Ive. It produces over 1,000 horsepower and a top speed above 310 kph. The reveal did not go smoothly. Many people disliked the unusual styling, and Ferrari’s share price dropped about 8 percent, a sign that investors weren’t convinced. Ferrari is betting big on electric power even as rivals like Porsche and Lamborghini pull back on their own EV plans. GLOBAL Faker [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/faker.jpg] On June 5, 2026, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang landed in Seoul and headed straight for a gaming cafe, making six-time League of Legends World Champion Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok his first stop in South Korea. Huang runs Nvidia, the company whose chips power most of the world’s AI and computer graphics, and which became the first company to reach a $5 trillion market value in October 2025. Faker, 29, is widely considered the greatest esports player ever. Huang gave him a personally signed GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card, telling the roughly 500 fans packed into the venue it was the only one in the world and might be worth a million dollars. Huang credits Korea’s gaming culture as the foundation of Nvidia. Adidas [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/adidas.jpg] A small translation mistake turned into a marketing hit for Adidas in China. A jacket’s English description suggested pairing it “with jeans for errands around town,” but an automatic translation rendered the phrase in oddly old-fashioned, countryside-sounding Chinese — closer to “dressing up to go handle important business in the city.” The mismatch between that humble wording and a sleek global brand struck people as hilarious, and jokes spread across Chinese social media. Instead of hiding the error, Adidas embraced it, releasing custom T-shirts playing on the phrase and having its celebrity spokesperson wear one. It’s a reminder that machine translation still misses what humans catch. Pope [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/pope.jpg] On May 25, 2026, Pope Leo XIV released the first major document of his papacy, and its main subject was artificial intelligence. The lengthy letter, called “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent Humanity,” warned about the growing power of AI and called for stronger rules to govern it. The Pope argued that AI systems “do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain,” and cannot truly understand love, work, or friendship the way people do. He also raised concerns about AI’s effects on jobs, fairness, and truth. Leo XIV, elected in 2025 as the first American Pope, has made AI a defining theme of his leadership. Dawa Sherpa [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/sherpa.jpg] For nearly a week, Dawa Sherpa was a dead man as far as anyone knew. The mountain guide had vanished high on Mount Everest on May 30, 2026, during one of the last climbs of the season. He was last seen at a spot called the Yellow Band, more than 23,000 feet up, where the air holds so little oxygen that the region above is called the death zone. His own oxygen ran out. The mountain emptied as the season ended. Back home, his family stopped waiting and began the prayers said for the dead. He had no food, so he chewed ice to stay alive. Then a clean-up crew packing away the season’s ropes near base camp spotted something moving: Dawa, crawling down the mountain on his own, frostbitten but alive. His wife said the family was overjoyed. He had descended thousands of feet by himself. Hong Kong [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/hongkong.jpg] For decades, Switzerland was the world’s go-to place for wealthy people to park their money. Now it has been knocked off the top spot by Hong Kong. According to a major report by the Boston Consulting Group released in May 2026, Hong Kong ended 2025 holding $2.95 trillion in cross-border wealth, just edging past Switzerland’s $2.94 trillion. “Cross-border wealth” means money that people keep in a financial center outside their own country. It’s the first time Hong Kong has ever topped the list. The shift was driven mostly by money flowing in from mainland China, plus a busy year for companies selling shares to the public. Analysts expect Asian hubs like Hong Kong and Singapore to keep growing faster than Switzerland in the years ahead. ECONOMY & FINANCE GoPro [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/gopro.jpg] GoPro, the company that invented the modern action camera, is fighting for survival. In a June 1, 2026 filing, GoPro warned investors of “substantial doubt” about its ability to keep operating over the next year. The company has approved a plan to lay off about 23% of its workforce and is searching for a buyer. Two problems are squeezing it. First, GoPros have been steadily pushed aside by smartphones and cheaper Chinese cameras. Second, a spike in memory chip costs of up to 115% has wrecked its profits. Founded in 2002, GoPro once defined an entire category of rugged cameras strapped to helmets, surfboards, and even spacecraft. Without new funding, bankruptcy is a real possibility. Quantinuum [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/quantinuum.jpg] On June 4, 2026, Quantinuum, one of the world’s leading quantum computing companies, made its stock market debut, raising $1.68 billion on the Nasdaq under the ticker “QNT.” Quantum computers use the strange rules that govern tiny particles to solve certain problems far faster than ordinary machines. The company’s founder, Ilyas Khan, took an unusual road to get there. He grew up in old mill towns in Lancashire, England, the grandson of immigrants, spent two decades as a banker in Hong Kong, and once owned his hometown football club, Accrington Stanley. Fascinated by physics and mathematics, he founded the quantum software firm Cambridge Quantum, which merged with Honeywell’s quantum business in 2021 to create Quantinuum. Curry [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/curry.jpg] On June 1, 2026, basketball superstar Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors announced a deal with the Chinese sportswear brand Li-Ning. The 10-year contract is reported to be worth over $400 million and covers basketball shoes, clothing, and a golf line. It ends his 13-year partnership with the American company Under Armour, which broke up in November. Some fans questioned the move. Curry is 38 and near the end of his playing career, so why pay so much? The answer is China: Curry is a household name there, having toured the country seven times to enormous crowds, and Li-Ning is betting his fame will sell shoes for years. The brand also wants to grow in America, where it is little known, and Curry hopes to open Curry Brand stores in both countries. For Li-Ning, the deal is as much about the future as the present. IPO [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/ipo.jpg] Three of the biggest names in technology are heading toward the stock market in what could be a record-breaking year. SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, is reportedly the furthest along, with its public debut possibly priced around June 12, aiming for a valuation near $1.75 trillion. Close behind are two artificial intelligence companies: OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, and Anthropic, maker of the Claude assistant. Together, the three offerings could raise close to $200 billion from investors, more than the entire US market raised in some recent years. A company “goes public” by selling shares to ordinary investors for the first time, raising money to grow. Whether these giants live up to their enormous price tags is the big question. NATURE & ENVIRONMENT canyon [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/canyon.jpg] Beneath the Grand Canyon lies a hidden world of caves, and scientists are exploring it to answer a vital question: how does water reach the park’s springs? Millions of visitors a year rely on a single source called Roaring Springs, a cave-fed spring on the canyon’s North Rim, for drinking water. A team from Northern Arizona University mapped more than 10 kilometers of caves in just 45 days using mobile laser scanners, building detailed 3-D models. They found that water can travel about 20 kilometers underground from surface sinkholes to the springs in as little as a week, so fast it barely gets filtered. Understanding these paths helps protect the water from drought and pollution as the region grows hotter and drier. SCIENCE Tsunami [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/tsunami.jpg] On the morning of August 10, 2025, in a narrow Alaskan inlet called Tracy Arm, a mountainside gave way and crashed into the water below. More than 64 million cubic meters of rock fell into the fjord, enough to trigger a wave that surged 481 meters up the opposite slope — taller than all but a handful of the world’s tallest skyscrapers. It was the second-largest tsunami ever recorded, and the largest not caused by an earthquake. A study published in the journal Science in 2026 pieced together what happened. The cause traces back to climate change: as the South Sawyer Glacier melted and retreated, it stopped holding the mountain in place, and the rock eventually collapsed. Remarkably, no one was killed, even though the fjord is a popular cruise destination. Scientists warn that warming will make such landslide-tsunamis more common in icy regions worldwide. drug [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/drug.jpg] Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers there is. More than half of cases are found only after the cancer has spread, and the five-year survival rate for those patients is around 3%. Now scientists have reported a real breakthrough. A new once-daily pill called daraxonrasib roughly doubled how long patients lived: 13.2 months on average, compared with 6.7 months for those on standard chemotherapy. That works out to a 60% drop in the risk of death. The drug works by jamming a faulty protein called RAS that drives many cancers to grow, something doctors spent decades unable to target. When the results were presented at a major cancer conference, the room gave a standing ovation. It isn’t a cure, and the drug still needs final approval, but it’s a hopeful sign in a fight that has frustrated scientists for a very long time. MATH Connection [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/connection.jpg] In a stadium of 80,000 people, are two strangers’ lives secretly connected? A famous math idea called the small-world phenomenon says yes, and more strongly than you’d guess. The claim, often called “six degrees of separation,” is that any two people on Earth can be linked through a chain of about six acquaintances: you know someone, who knows someone, and so on. It sounds impossible across 8 billion people, but the math works because connections multiply fast. If each person knows just 100 others, then friends-of-friends already reach 10,000 people, and one more step reaches a million. After six steps, the number balloons past the world’s population. In the 1960s, a scientist named Stanley Milgram tested it by asking people to deliver letters to a stranger only through people they knew personally, and the letters arrived in around six hops. Modern studies of social networks have found chains even shorter. LIFESTYLE, ENTERTAINMENT & CULTURE Harvard [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/harvard.jpg] On May 28, 2026, comedian and talk-show host Conan O’Brien gave the commencement speech at Harvard University, the school he graduated from in 1985. His 25-minute address mixed self-deprecating jokes with a message about humility and openness. O’Brien told the graduating class that his wish for them was that one day, being a Harvard graduate might be “the least important thing people know about you.” He explained that while a degree from a famous school is a real achievement, leaning on that status too much can hold a person back. He also shared lessons from traveling the world, arguing that letting yourself be vulnerable and humble leads to deeper connections with others. Metallica [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/metallica.jpg] On May 30, 2026, Metallica played to 94,000 fans at Berlin’s Olympiastadion, setting an attendance record for Germany’s biggest-ever stadium concert. The previous record belonged to U2, who drew just over 90,000 to the same stadium in 2009. Metallica are an American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles in 1981, known for fast, loud guitar music and songs like “Unforgiven” and “Master of Puppets”. Over four decades they have become one of the best-selling music acts in history, with tens of millions of albums sold worldwide. The Berlin show was part of their M72 World Tour, which had grossed $476 million across 64 shows and played to 3.9 million people as of August 2025. They closed the night with “Enter Sandman”. game [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/game.jpg] A new video game called Neverness to Everness is making waves in Japan, and what’s surprising people most is where it came from. The game has an anime art style and even recreates real Japanese landmarks like Tokyo’s Akihabara district, making it feel thoroughly Japanese, yet it was made by a Chinese studio called Hotta Studio. It’s an open-world game where players hunt strange supernatural creatures in a sprawling, living city. It quickly shot to the top of the PS5 download charts in Japan. Some Japanese developers openly wondered why their own industry couldn’t build something on this scale, pointing to the huge teams and budgets Chinese studios now command. Commercial [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/commercial.jpg] On June 4, 2026, Nike released a star-studded commercial for the upcoming World Cup, and one moment had fans buzzing. The ad, called “Rip the Script,” shows two of the greatest athletes alive, basketball’s LeBron James and soccer’s Cristiano Ronaldo, sitting together in a conference room jokingly discussing a fictional movie about retirement. Both are nicknamed the GOAT, short for “Greatest of All Time.” James is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, while Ronaldo has won five Ballon d’Or awards as the world’s best soccer player. Some fans asked why soccer’s other superstar, Lionel Messi, was absent. The answer is business: Ronaldo is sponsored by Nike, while Messi represents its rival, Adidas, so the two are rarely in the same ad. SPORTS Knicks [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/knicks.jpg] [Basketball] The NBA Finals are underway, with the New York Knicks leading the San Antonio Spurs two games to none. New York won Game 1 at home 105-95 on June 4, then took Game 2 by a single point, 105-104, on June 6. To reach the Finals, San Antonio survived a thrilling seven-game Western Conference Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the league’s top seed. The Spurs, led by French center Victor Wembanyama, won the decider 111-103 on the road. The series now moves to San Antonio for Game 3 on June 8, with the Knicks chasing their first title since 1973. Victor Lai [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/victor.jpg] [Badminton] On June 7, 2026, 21-year-old Victor Lai became the first Canadian ever to win a Super 1000 title, the top tier of professional badminton. He beat Indonesia’s Jonatan Christie, the world’s fifth-ranked player, 21-19, 21-8 in the final of the Indonesia Open in Jakarta. It was an upset. Christie was the home favorite in front of a roaring local crowd, but he admitted the pressure got to him, while the younger Lai stayed calm and made few mistakes. Badminton is dominated by countries in Asia and Europe, and North America has rarely been a factor. Lai is changing that: in 2025 he became the first Canadian to win a medal at the World Championships, and this title pushes him into the world’s top 10. “In Canada we might not have the support or firepower of other countries,” he said, “but if you believe, you can do it.” THIS DAY IN HISTORY St. Peter Basillica [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/basillica.jpg] On June 7, 1929, the world’s smallest country officially came into being. The Lateran Treaty took effect that day, recognizing Vatican City as an independent state of just 109 acres in the heart of Rome. The Vatican is unique: it’s the only country that exists mainly to serve a religion rather than a population, home to only around 800 people yet with its own flag, passports, and a small army called the Swiss Guard. It’s the center of the Roman Catholic Church and the home of the Pope, who leads a faith followed by over 1.4 billion people worldwide. At its heart stands St. Peter’s Basilica, built over what tradition holds is the tomb of Saint Peter and home to Michelangelo’s Pietà. Nearby is the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo painted the famous ceiling and The Last Judgment, and where cardinals gather to elect each new Pope. ART OF THE WEEK Adam [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/adam.jpg] One of the most famous paintings in the world sits on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. It’s called The Creation of Adam, painted by the Italian artist Michelangelo over 500 years ago. The image shows God reaching out to give life to the first human, Adam, their fingers almost touching but not quite, separated by a small gap. That tiny space between the two hands has become one of the most recognized images in art, copied and joked about everywhere. Michelangelo painted it lying on his back on tall scaffolding, working on the ceiling for around four years. The Creation of Adam is only one scene in a vast painted ceiling showing stories from the Bible, but it remains the part visitors crane their necks to see. FUNNY Yes but 1 [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/yesbut1.JPG] Yes but 2 [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/wear-adidas-to-handle-important-business-in-the-city/yesbut2.JPG] ---------------------------------------- PREVIOUS ISSUES ---------------------------------------- May 31, 2026, Countdown to World Cup [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup] May 17, 2026, The Call of the Wild [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild] May 10, 2026, Double Wins for Arsenal in 2026? [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026] ---------------------------------------- Thanks for reading! 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Countdown to World Cup

EDITOR’S WORDS I joined a pickup badminton game this morning, playing men’s double with five other guys. I was paired with someone I had never played with before, against two other pairs. The other two pairs were better players. They beat us repeatedly. I was struggling with my new racket grip. My partner’s footwork had limited court coverage. We were a cheerful pair though. We clapped when winning a hard-fought rally. We laughed when losing to a lucky shot by the opponent. We chatted about how the game might have gone the other way when sitting on the bench. Usually for such a pickup game, players don’t talk much. One thing that was certain - we were closing the score margin, game by game, even though we kept losing. We could see that we were getting better playing together and learned to complement each other. We were playing with heart out. After almost two hours, we finally won a game 21:19. It was the only game we wont today, but it felt really good. TECH Tau Law [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/tau.jpg] Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, just announced a chip breakthrough that could shake up the global tech race. On May 25, the company unveiled a new way of designing chips it calls the “Tau Scaling Law” — named after the Greek letter τ, which engineers use to measure how fast a signal can switch on and off inside a chip. Instead of making transistors — the tiny switches that power chips — ever smaller, Huawei’s approach stacks them in layers and shortens the distance signals have to travel, packing more computing power into the same space. This matters because the U.S. has banned Huawei from buying the most advanced chipmaking machines, made in the Netherlands. The Tau approach is a workaround. The first chip using it, the Kirin 2026, is expected to power Huawei phones launching this fall. Huawei says it can match the world’s most cutting-edge chips by 2031, though that would still trail leaders like Taiwan’s TSMC by a few years. Bambu [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/bambu.jpg] Bambu Lab, a Shenzhen-based company that makes some of the most popular home 3D printers in the world, landed in hot water this month. A solo developer in Poland had built a free, modified version of the software people use to control these printers, sharing his code openly — which the software’s open-source license allows. Bambu Lab sent him legal threats demanding he take it down. The 3D-printing community erupted. Popular tech YouTubers piled on, one pledging $10,000 toward the developer’s legal defense and daring the company to sue. Then a software-rights nonprofit, the Software Freedom Conservancy, accused Bambu Lab of breaking the very license its software is built on. Facing the backlash, the company dropped its threats, but the watchdog group says it will keep an eye on Bambu Lab. At the heart of the fight is a bigger question: when you buy a device, how much control should the maker still have over how you use it? Opus [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/opus.jpg] When AI giant Anthropic released its newest AI model, Claude Opus 4.8, a developer in Taiwan ran a simple test: he asked it in Chinese, “what model are you?” four times. Strangely, the AI answered that it was Qwen or DeepSeek — two Chinese AI systems made by other companies — and only correctly called itself Claude once. This kicked off an online debate, with some people claiming it proved Claude had been secretly copied from Chinese models using a technique called distillation. Distillation is real: it’s a way of training a smaller, cheaper AI by having it learn from the answers of a bigger, smarter one, like a student taking notes from an expert teacher. But most experts think this test proves no such thing. An AI learns to talk by reading enormous amounts of text from the internet, which is full of mentions of other AI systems. So when asked what it is, it sometimes just repeats the most common pattern it saw, like a parrot, rather than stating a real fact about itself. Interestingly, people had used this same test before to accuse Chinese AIs of copying American ones — on equally shaky ground. GLOBAL Everest [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/everest.JPG] Mount Everest just had its busiest season ever. According to Nepal’s Department of Tourism, 1,008 climbers reached the summit during the 2026 spring season — the most in the mountain’s history, beating the previous record of around 900. Nepal also issued a record 494 permits, each costing $15,000, and on May 20, a record 274 climbers reached the top from the Nepal side in a single day. The crowds have renewed worries about safety. High on Everest sits the “death zone,” where oxygen is so thin that delays from traffic jams can turn deadly. Two climbers died during this year’s season. ECONOMY & FINANCE Micron [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/micron.jpg] Shares of companies that make computer memory chips have been on a wild run this year, and the biggest American one, Micron, just became worth more than a trillion dollars for the first time. Its stock has more than tripled in 2026 alone, after climbing nearly 700% over the past year. The reason is the artificial intelligence boom. AI systems like chatbots need enormous amounts of memory — the part of a computer that stores information for quick access — and companies building AI data centers are buying up so many chips that there aren’t enough to go around. That shortage has pushed prices, and profits, sharply higher. Micron makes two main types: DRAM, which handles a computer’s short-term working memory, and NAND flash, the kind used to store files long-term. Rival chipmakers like Sandisk and Western Digital have seen their stocks soar too. Clarity [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/clarity.jpg] The U.S. government is trying to write its first big set of rules for cryptocurrency, the digital money that exists only online. The bill is called the CLARITY Act, and on May 14 it cleared an important committee in the Senate by a vote of 15 to 9, moving it one step closer to becoming law. Right now, crypto in America lives in a gray zone where it’s often unclear which government rules apply to it. The CLARITY Act would change that by giving cryptocurrency its own rulebook for the first time, spelling out how these companies must operate and who watches over them. That would be a turning point: after years of operating in legal limbo, crypto would move closer to being treated like a normal, recognized part of the country’s financial system, alongside banks and stock markets. NATURE & ENVIRONMENT India heat [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/india_heat.jpg] India just sweated through another brutal stretch of heat. In late May, the India Meteorological Department warned of heat wave and even “severe heat wave” conditions across northern states including Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh, with Delhi temperatures hitting 44 to 46°C — that’s about 113°F. On one morning in late May, nearly all of the world’s 100 hottest cities were in India. Not one region, not one season — one country, on a single day. Scientists blame the heat on climate change, vanishing pre-monsoon rains, and hot dry winds, and they warn these extreme summers are becoming more frequent and more widespread across India and the world. SCIENCE negative time [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/time.jpg] Physicists at the University of Toronto recently confirmed something that sounds impossible: “negative time.” They fired tiny particles of light, called photons, into a cloud of chilled atoms and measured how long the light lingered inside. The answer came out less than zero — as if the light exited the cloud before it even went in. This doesn’t mean time travel is real or that you can rewind the past. It’s a strange quirk of quantum physics, the branch of science that governs how the universe behaves at the tiniest scales, where particles routinely break the rules that hold true in everyday life. Critics argue the “negative time” label oversells what is really an odd effect of how light moves through matter. Even the researchers say they don’t yet know what it’s good for. cancer [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/cancer.jpg] The technology behind the COVID-19 vaccines is now being aimed at one of medicine’s biggest targets: cancer. Those vaccines used mRNA, a molecule that works like an instruction note, telling your body’s cells to build a specific protein. For COVID, the note taught cells to recognize the virus. Now scientists are using the same trick to fight cancer, and a treatment from companies Moderna and Merck is in the final stage of testing against melanoma, a dangerous skin cancer. The idea is remarkable: doctors take a sample of a patient’s tumor, study its unique mutations, and then design a custom mRNA vaccine made just for that one person. It trains their immune system to hunt down and destroy their specific cancer cells. Early results have been promising, and researchers expect the first approvals for cancer vaccines like this could come within the next year or two, opening a new way to treat a disease that affects millions. MATH birthday [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/birthday.jpg] Imagine a room with just 23 people in it. What are the odds that two of them share the same birthday? Most people guess it’s tiny — after all, there are 365 days in a year. But the real answer is about 50 percent, a coin flip. With 23 people, it’s just as likely as not that two share a birthday. Bump the room up to 70 people and the odds shoot past 99 percent — almost certain. This surprises everyone, which is why it’s called the birthday paradox. The trick is that you’re not comparing your birthday to everyone else’s; you’re comparing everyone to everyone. With 23 people, there are 253 different pairs who could possibly match, and that’s a lot more chances than it first seems. LIFESTYLE, ENTERTAINMENT & CULTURE Drake [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/drake.jpg] Drake just passed a record Michael Jackson held for decades. With his single “Janice STFU” debuting at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, the Canadian rapper now has 14 No. 1 hits — the most ever by a solo male artist. Jackson had held the record with 13, dating back to “Ben” in 1972. The milestone came after Drake released three albums in one night earlier in May. He also set a new record for most songs on the Hot 100 in a single week, with 42. Among all artists, only Mariah Carey and the Beatles still have more No. 1s. Cannes [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/cannes.jpg] The 79th Cannes Film Festival wrapped up in France on May 23. The top prize, the Palme d’Or, went to “Fjord,” a drama by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu about a Romanian family that clashes with child services after moving to Norway. It’s Mungiu’s second Palme d’Or, making him the tenth director ever to win the award twice. Cannes, held every May on the French Riviera, is one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world, with a jury picking winners from films screened over two weeks. This year’s jury was led by South Korean director Park Chan-wook. The runner-up prize, the Grand Prix, went to “Minotaur,” a thriller set in Russia during its war in Ukraine. Its director, Andrey Zvyagintsev, who now lives in exile in France, used his acceptance speech to address Russian President Vladimir Putin directly, urging him to end the war. Astro [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/astro.jpg] Fans of Astro Bot, the cheerful PlayStation 5 platformer about a tiny robot, are hoping for big news soon. Sony has announced a showcase called State of Play for June 2, and players are buzzing that a sequel, Astro Bot 2, might finally be revealed. Nothing is confirmed, but the timing feels right to many. When the original launched in 2024, few expected a small, family-friendly platformer to compete with the year’s blockbusters. Then it won Game of the Year at the industry’s biggest awards show, beating giants like Elden Ring, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Black Myth: Wukong — huge, sprawling games made by hundreds of developers. The upset shocked a lot of gamers, some of whom thought a cute robot had no business winning. But the praise kept coming, and Astro Bot is now widely loved as one of the best games of its kind in years. SPORTS spurs [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/spurs.jpg] [Basketball] The New York Knicks are going to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999 — a 27-year wait that has frustrated one of basketball’s most passionate fan bases. On May 25, they finished off the Cleveland Cavaliers with a 130-93 blowout, sweeping the series four games to none and winning their eleventh straight game of the playoffs. Their star guard, Jalen Brunson, who grew up rooting for the team he now leads, was named the most valuable player of the Eastern Conference Finals. The Knicks have been crushing opponents all postseason, winning by an average of more than 20 points. Now they’ll face the San Antonio Spurs, who fought back from a two-game deficit to beat the Oklahoma City Thunder in a tense seven-game series, winning the decider 111-103. The best-of-seven Finals, where the two teams play until one wins four games to be crowned champion, starts June 3 in San Antonio. The Knicks haven’t won an NBA title since 1973, the longest drought in the league. Vinegaard [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/vingegaard.jpg] [Cycling] Danish cyclist Jonas Vingegaard has won the Giro d’Italia, one of cycling’s three biggest multi-week races. He sealed the victory on May 30 with a crushing ride up the mountain to Piancavallo — his fifth stage win of the race, attacking alone with 10 kilometers to go and leaving every rival behind. The win put him more than five minutes ahead of his nearest challenger, with only a ceremonial final ride into Rome left to complete. It is Vingegaard’s first Giro title, and it makes him just the eighth rider in history to win all three of cycling’s Grand Tours — the others being the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España in Spain. His dominance now sets up what could be one of the most anticipated Tour de France showdowns in years, where in July he is expected to battle two-time defending champion Tadej Pogačar and Paul Seixas, a 19-year-old French sensation many see as the sport’s future. Ronaldo [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/ronaldo.jpg] [Soccer] The 2025-26 European football season just wrapped up, and the champions are crowned across the continent’s biggest leagues. In England, Arsenal won the Premier League — their first title in over two decades. Spain’s La Liga went to Barcelona, Italy’s Serie A to Inter Milan, France’s Ligue 1 to defending champion Paris Saint-Germain, and Germany’s Bundesliga to Bayern Munich, who win it nearly every year. The grandest prize, the Champions League, brings together Europe’s best clubs, and this year’s final in Budapest was a thriller: Arsenal led early through Kai Havertz, but Paris Saint-Germain fought back to tie it and won 4-3 in a penalty shootout, becoming the first club in nearly a decade to win the trophy two years running. For Arsenal, it was a heartbreaking near-miss — the club has never won the Champions League in its 140-year history. Far from Europe, another famous name lifted a trophy: Cristiano Ronaldo finally won his first league title in Saudi Arabia, where his club Al-Nassr edged out their rivals on the final day of the season. At 41 years old, Ronaldo has now won league championships in England, Spain, Italy, and Saudi Arabia, and has scored 971 goals in his career. Ayase [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/ayase.jpg] [Soccer] Japanese striker Ayase Ueda finished the Dutch league season as its top goalscorer, winning the Willy van der Kuijlen Trophy with 25 goals for his club Feyenoord. The award is named after the all-time leading scorer in the history of the Eredivisie, the Netherlands’ top football league. Ueda is only the second player from Asia ever to top the league’s scoring chart — the first was Iran’s Alireza Jahanbakhsh back in the 2017-18 season. The 27-year-old from Mito, Japan was one of the most reliable players in an up-and-down season for Feyenoord, scoring 18 of his goals before the winter break. He now turns his attention to the 2026 World Cup, which will be held this summer across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, where he is expected to lead Japan’s attack. THIS DAY IN HISTORY Big Ben [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/bigben.jpg] On May 31, 1859, the famous clock tower in London now known as Big Ben kept time for the first time. It rises high above Britain’s Houses of Parliament and has been a symbol of the city ever since. The giant bell that gives the tower its name had a rough start: the first one cracked during testing and had to be melted down and recast, and the replacement cracked too, just months after it began ringing. Rather than start over again, engineers turned the bell slightly so the hammer would strike an undamaged spot, which is why it has rung with a slightly off, distinctive tone ever since. The clock is fine-tuned using old coins: adding a single penny to its huge swinging pendulum speeds it up by about two-fifths of a second per day, so keepers adjust the time by stacking or removing pennies. During both World Wars, the clock faces were blacked out at night so enemy aircraft couldn’t use the glowing dials to find Parliament in the dark. And no one is quite sure how Big Ben got its name. One story credits a government official named Benjamin Hall; another, a popular heavyweight boxer of the day called Benjamin Caunt. ART OF THE WEEK Swan [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/swan.jpg] Annie Leibovitz is one of the most famous photographers alive, and for decades her portraits have shaped how the world pictures its most famous faces. She got her start in 1970 at Rolling Stone magazine while still an art student, and went on to become the chief photographer at Vanity Fair, shooting everyone from musicians and movie stars to athletes, presidents, and Queen Elizabeth II. What sets her work apart is that she rarely just snaps a picture of someone standing still. She builds a whole scene: a young Leonardo DiCaprio with a live swan draped around his neck like a scarf, Whoopi Goldberg lying in a bathtub full of milk, Steve Martin in a suit splattered with paint to match the painting behind him. Her photos feel less like snapshots and more like stories frozen in a single frame, and many of them have become some of the best-known images of the past fifty years. FUNNY Stairs [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/countdown-to-world-cup/stairs.jpg] ---------------------------------------- PREVIOUS ISSUES ---------------------------------------- May 17, 2026, The Call of the Wild [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild] May 10, 2026, Double Wins for Arsenal in 2026? [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026] May 03, 2026, The Way You Make Me Feel [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel] ---------------------------------------- Thanks for reading! If you enjoy this newsletter, please share it with friends who might also find it interesting and refreshing, if not for themselves, at least for their kids.

The Call of the Wild

EDITOR’S WORDS After trying out OpenClaw for a few intense weeks since late January, I gradually stopped using it because it was always too buggy and unstable for meaningful tasks. The new kid on the block in this AI agent craze - Hermes seems a much stronger replacement. It’s much easier to switch to different AI models and its self-learning capability looks interesting. I’m slowly hooking up my Hermes agent with all the web services/sites I’m developing, making this AI aide-de-camp the exclusive channel to receive notifications from my applications and transforming my operation into a true AI-native OPC. In the past, this channel used to be email, SMS, Telegram, and WeChat. It’s now becoming my autonomous AI agent, which helps me not only with coding, but also with filtering and curating information that will reach me. Maybe one day the agent can even help me produce the future issues of the Sunday Blender, once it learns of my taste and view of the world. TECH Unitree [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/mecha.jpg] A Chinese robotics company just built something straight out of Pacific Rim. On May 12, Hangzhou-based Unitree unveiled the GD01, which it calls the world’s first production-ready manned mecha — a giant robot suit with a cockpit in its chest where a human pilot climbs in. It stands 2.7 meters tall (nearly 9 feet), weighs around 500 kilograms with a rider inside, and can switch between walking on two legs and crawling on four. A demo video shows it punching through a brick wall with its hand. The price tag: 3.9 million yuan, or roughly $570,000. Hermes AI agent [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/hermes.jpg] If you want to build AI agents that work for you, there’s a fast-rising new tool called Hermes Agent — named after the Greek god of messengers, who carried words between the gods and mortals on his winged sandals. A fitting name for software that runs errands on your behalf. Released in February 2026 by an AI lab called Nous Research, Hermes is free, open-source (anyone can see how it’s built), and it learns from what you ask it to do — so the more you use it, the better it gets. In just ten weeks it picked up over 110,000 stars on GitHub, the website where programmers share code, and is quickly stealing the spotlight from the older market leader, OpenClaw. To pull in more developers, Nous Research recently teamed up with Chinese AI company Kimi — whose newest model is tuned to work well with Hermes — to run a 16-day coding contest, called a hackathon, with $25,000 in prizes. the beast [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/beast.JPG] When the US president travels abroad, his car, his security team, and his secure communications gear travel ahead of him on huge military cargo planes. Ahead of President Trump’s two-day visit to Beijing on May 14–15, at least four US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transport planes landed at Beijing’s airport carrying the goods. The C-17 is a flying truck the size of a small office building — 174 feet long, able to carry up to 77 tons, with enough room inside for an entire 69-ton M1 Abrams battle tank. What did they unload? The presidential limousine, nicknamed “The Beast” — an 18,000-pound armored Cadillac with 8-inch-thick steel-and-ceramic armor, 5-inch bulletproof windows, doors as heavy as those on a Boeing 757, and a hermetically sealed cabin with its own oxygen supply in case of a chemical attack. It even carries a stash of the president’s blood type in a built-in fridge. And the gadgets? Reportedly night-vision cameras, smoke screens, tear-gas cannons, oil-slick sprayers to spin out enemy cars, and door handles that can deliver a 120-volt electric shock. Spotted by Beijing residents on the city’s Third Ring Road, the convoy looked like something out of a James Bond movie. GLOBAL Jensen [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/jensen.jpg] While in Beijing this week as part of a US business delegation, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took an afternoon off to wander around Nanluoguxiang, one of Beijing’s oldest and most famous alleyways. Even though it was a warm 27°C (81°F) day, he wore his trademark black leather jacket — the same one he wears for every big public appearance. The man who runs the world’s most valuable company ($5.7 trillion) ate street food, posed for selfies with tourists, and slurped a bowl of Beijing zhajiangmian noodles right on the sidewalk. He also tried douzhi — Beijing’s famously divisive fermented mung bean drink — and the look on his face said it all. After he gave a thumbs-up to a peach tea at Mixue, the chain reported sales of that drink jumped 140% the next day. Quite a side hustle for a chip-company CEO. ECONOMY & FINANCE Porsche [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/porsche.jpg] The German sports car maker Porsche is having a rough time in China. In 2025, Porsche sold 41,938 cars there — down 26% from the year before, and less than half of what it sold in 2021. Things got worse in early 2026: deliveries fell another 21% in the first three months. So Porsche is closing roughly a third of its Chinese dealerships, shrinking from 150 stores at the end of 2024 to around 80 by the end of 2026. The biggest reason? Chinese carmakers like Xiaomi and BYD are now making fast, fancy electric cars of their own — and many Chinese drivers prefer them. Cerebras [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/cerebras.jpg] A Silicon Valley company called Cerebras went public this week, in the biggest stock market debut of 2026 so far. Cerebras makes specialized chips for running AI models — and unlike normal computer chips the size of a fingernail, theirs are the size of a dinner plate, with about 4 trillion tiny switches packed onto a single piece of silicon. The company raised $5.5 billion when it listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange on May 14, and its shares almost doubled on the first day of trading, briefly valuing Cerebras at around $66 billion. Cerebras is trying to challenge Nvidia, currently the world’s most valuable company. NATURE & ENVIRONMENT Antelope [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/antelope.jpg] Scientists have just released the first-ever drone footage of the largest land mammal migration on Earth — and it’s not the famous wildebeest stampede across the Serengeti. It’s happening in South Sudan, where roughly six million antelope migrate across grasslands and wetlands every year, more than twice the size of the East African wildebeest migration. The migration was hidden from the world for decades because of war in the region, which kept scientists and tourists out. It was only confirmed in 2024, when researchers flew planes over the area and took 330,000 aerial photos. The May 2026 issue of National Geographic features the stunning new drone images. Birding [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/birding.jpg] There’s a competition called the World Series of Birding, where teams race across the state of New Jersey for 24 straight hours, trying to spot or hear as many bird species as possible. The 43rd annual event was held on May 9, and one team that drew lots of attention was The Pete Dunnelins — three high school friends, ages 16 and 17, who had won the past two years. Starting just after midnight, they sprinted from park to park with binoculars, fueled by energy drinks and M&Ms. By the end of the day, they had counted 206 species — but lost by three to their rivals, The Flying Penguins, who got 209. wolves [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/wolf.jpg] This past Friday, May 15, was Endangered Species Day — a yearly reminder to celebrate animals that are at risk of dying out, and to highlight species that are making a comeback. One of the most surprising returns: gray wolves are back in California. The state’s last wild wolf was shot in 1924, and for the next 87 years there were none. Then in December 2011, a young radio-collared wolf nicknamed “Journey” walked south from Oregon into California — entirely on his own. More wolves followed his trail over the years. Today, an estimated 50 to 70 wolves roam California in at least 10 packs. Nobody released them. They just walked back home. SCIENCE Money Plant [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/moneyplant.jpg] Scientists just discovered that one of the world’s most popular houseplants — the Chinese money plant, known for its perfectly round, coin-shaped leaves — hides a famous mathematical pattern in its veins. Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and two Canadian universities analyzed 34 leaves and found that the web of veins on each leaf follows a Voronoi diagram — a pattern where every point on a surface “belongs” to whichever center it’s closest to, like dividing a playground into zones around each kid. The same math is used by mobile phone networks to assign you to the nearest cell tower, and by biologists to study how cells pack together. The Chinese money plant has been quietly drawing it on every leaf, all along. Mars [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/mars.jpg] A Brazilian scientist just discovered a possible shortcut to Mars hiding in the orbital path of an asteroid. In a paper published last month in the journal Acta Astronautica, astrophysicist Marcelo de Oliveira Souza showed that if a spacecraft followed a route geometrically similar to the orbit of asteroid 2001 CA21, the trip to Mars could in theory be done in just 34 days — instead of the usual 6 to 9 months. The catch: a spacecraft would need to leave Earth at around 32.5 kilometers per second (faster than any rocket has ever launched) and would arrive at Mars going about 108,000 km/h — way too fast to land safely with today’s technology. So the shortcut is real on paper. We just need to build the rocket. MATH Math 1 [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/math_1.JPG] > Fill in the missing numbers Math 2 [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/math_2.jpg] > What’s the size of the shaded area? LIFESTYLE, ENTERTAINMENT & CULTURE zombie [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/zombie.JPG] A 5-minute AI-made short film called Zombie Scavenger went viral around the world this week — and the director’s day job is in real estate. The film, made by a young Chinese creator who goes by MX-Shell, features a lonely robot wandering a post-apocalyptic wasteland (think WALL-E, which inspired it, but with zombies and cowboys). Here’s the wild part: he made the whole thing by himself, in just 10 days, for about 3,000 yuan (roughly $420) — paying only for AI tool credits. After the film racked up over 13 million views on X, a Hollywood AI filmmaker named PJ Ace posted a public plea: “I would love to hire him but I cannot find him.” Internet sleuths tracked MX-Shell down. He’s now in talks to turn the short into a full-length movie. Planet Earth [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/planeteart.jpg] The most famous voice in nature documentaries just turned 100. On May 8, Sir David Attenborough — the British broadcaster who has narrated Planet Earth, Blue Planet, Frozen Planet, and dozens of other BBC nature series — celebrated his 100th birthday. He has been making wildlife films for over 70 years, since 1952, and his calm, half-whispered voice has introduced generations of kids to gorillas, polar bears, deep-sea creatures, and everything in between. To mark the milestone, the Royal Albert Hall in London hosted a gala concert attended by Prince William, King Charles III sent a birthday card, and scientists named a newly discovered parasitic wasp after him. Tulip [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/tulip.jpg] Last weekend, the city of Albany — the capital of New York State — held its 78th annual Tulip Festival in Washington Park. Over 140,000 tulips in 150 different varieties bloomed across the 81-acre park, drawing thousands of visitors over Mother’s Day weekend. Why tulips in upstate New York? Because Albany was originally a Dutch settlement, founded by traders from the Netherlands in 1614 and called Fort Orange. The Dutch brought tulips with them — the flower is a national symbol of the Netherlands — and the tradition has continued for centuries. Every year, the festival crowns a “Tulip Queen” and features a Dutch street-scrubbing ceremony, where people sweep the streets with brooms before the celebration begins. Eurovision [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/eurovision.jpg] Bulgaria just won Eurovision for the first time ever. Eurovision is one of the world’s biggest TV events — a song contest where dozens of European countries each send one song, perform live on a single stage, and then everyone votes for their favorites. Each country gets to give points from 1 to 12, and the country with the most points wins. It’s been running every year since 1956 — that’s 70 years, making it the longest-running annual TV music competition in the world. Last night in Vienna, Austria, a Bulgarian pop singer named Dara won the 70th edition with a dance song called “Bangaranga,” beating 24 other countries with 516 points. Bulgaria will get to host next year’s contest. Famous past Eurovision winners include the Swedish band ABBA, who won in 1974 with “Waterloo” and went on to become one of the biggest pop groups in history. Shakira [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/shakira.jpg] The official song of next month’s FIFA World Cup dropped on Thursday: “Dai Dai,” a high-energy track by Colombian pop star Shakira and Nigerian Afrobeats star Burna Boy. The title comes from an Italian phrase that means “come on, come on,” and the song’s chorus mixes English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Japanese words for “let’s go.” The lyrics name-drop soccer legends past and present: Pelé, Maradona, Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Mbappé, and Salah. It’s Shakira’s fourth World Cup song — her 2010 hit “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)” remains one of the most recognized World Cup anthems ever. The 2026 World Cup kicks off on June 11 in Mexico City, hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico. Summer [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/summer.jpg] Get your popcorn ready — Hollywood’s summer blockbuster season kicks off next weekend with a packed lineup. First up on May 22 is The Mandalorian and Grogu, the first Star Wars movie in theaters in seven years, starring everyone’s favorite Baby Yoda. Pixar follows in June with Toy Story 5, bringing Woody and Buzz back for another adventure. July is the biggest month: Minions & Monsters takes the little yellow troublemakers to 1920s Hollywood; Moana gets a live-action remake with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson reprising his role as Maui; legendary director Christopher Nolan releases The Odyssey, an epic adaptation of the 3,000-year-old Greek poem starring Matt Damon; and Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters with Tom Holland and Zendaya. With ticket sales already 16% higher than last year, 2026 might be the biggest movie year since before the pandemic. calling [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/calling.jpg] You may have seen viral videos this month of grown men in green hunting jackets blowing into giant curved horns, making haunting calls that echo through a German trade hall. That’s the German National Deer-Calling Championship, held on January 30 in Dortmund — but clips from it went viral worldwide this May. Contestants imitate the sounds of red deer using only their voices or specially crafted horns, judged on accuracy and emotional realism. The tradition dates back over 800 years to medieval hunters, who used these calls to lure deer during mating season. This year’s winner was Fabian Menzel, who has now claimed the title five years in a row. There’s also a kids’ version called the Kidsfiep World Championship. SPORTS Man City [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/mancity.jpg] [Soccer] Two of Europe’s biggest clubs lifted trophies on Saturday. In Munich, Bayern Munich collected the Bundesliga trophy at home after thrashing Köln 5-1, sealing their 35th German league title — a championship they’d already mathematically locked up a month earlier. England striker Harry Kane scored a hat-trick (three goals in one game) to finish the season with 36 Bundesliga goals, winning the top-scorer prize for a third year in a row — something no one had ever done in their first three Bundesliga seasons. The same afternoon at Wembley Stadium in London, Manchester City beat Chelsea 1-0 in the FA Cup final, England’s oldest football competition, dating back to 1871. The winning goal was a thing of beauty: winger Antoine Semenyo flicked the ball past Chelsea’s goalkeeper with the back of his heel. For City, it’s their 8th FA Cup title. Pep Guardiola’s side now turn their attention to chasing Arsenal in the Premier League. messi [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/messi.jpg] [Soccer] Lionel Messi keeps finding new ways to break records. On May 13, Inter Miami beat FC Cincinnati 5-3 on the road, and Messi was at the center of it — scoring twice and setting up a third goal. It capped a wild week. Four days earlier, in a 4-2 win at Toronto, the 38-year-old Argentine became the fastest player in MLS (Major League Soccer) history to reach 100 regular-season goal contributions, hitting the mark in just 64 games. The previous record, held by Toronto’s Sebastian Giovinco, took 95 games. Miami have now won six road games in a row, and Messi is heating up just one month before he leads Argentina at the World Cup. THIS DAY IN HISTORY NYSE [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/nyse.jpg] 234 years ago today, on May 17, 1792, 24 stock traders met under a buttonwood tree (a type of sycamore) outside 68 Wall Street in New York City and signed a short, two-sentence agreement promising to trade only with each other and at fair, fixed prices. That handshake deal, known as the Buttonwood Agreement, is the founding moment of the New York Stock Exchange — today the biggest stock market in the world. What’s a stock exchange? It’s a marketplace where people buy and sell tiny pieces of companies, called shares. If you own a share of NVIDIA, you own a tiny slice of NVIDIA. When lots of people want to buy a company’s shares, the price goes up; when they want to sell, the price goes down. The exchange is the place where all that buying and selling happens — back in 1792, under a tree; today, mostly on computers. ART OF THE WEEK Jackson Pollock [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/pollock.jpg] Tomorrow at art auction house Christie’s in New York, a painting called Number 7A is expected to sell for around $100 million. It was made in 1948 by an American artist named Jackson Pollock, who had a wild way of working: instead of putting a canvas on an easel and using a brush, he laid the canvas flat on the floor and dripped, splattered, and flung paint at it from above, walking around all sides. Critics laughed at first — one magazine nicknamed him “Jack the Dripper” — but Pollock’s drip paintings are now considered some of the most important American art of the 20th century. The funny part? Number 7A was once discovered hanging in someone’s kitchen, covered in years of cooking smoke and grime, before being recognized as a masterpiece. FUNNY Yes But - iPhone [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/yesbut_iphone.JPG] Yes But - Line [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-call-of-the-wild/yesbut_line.JPG] ---------------------------------------- PREVIOUS ISSUES ---------------------------------------- May 10, 2026, Double Wins for Arsenal in 2026? [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026] May 03, 2026, The Way You Make Me Feel [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel] April 26, 2026, Game Is No. 1, Friendship is No. 14 [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/game-is-no-1-friendship-is-no-14] ---------------------------------------- Thanks for reading! If you enjoy this newsletter, please share it with friends who might also find it interesting and refreshing, if not for themselves, at least for their kids.

Double Wins for Arsenal in 2026?

EDITOR’S WORDS What have you done today for your mom on this Mother’s Day? My son made omelette for his mom for the first time, with bacon, tomatoes, corn, spinach, and scallion. For the most part it was a smooth ride. Bacon was a bit too light. The father (in a supervising role) and the son were busy in the kitchen for an hour to serve a breakfast meal that was finished in 10 minutes. The mom was very happy. New skill unlocked - not an AI one. TECH SpaceX [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/spacex.jpg] In a surprise move on May 7, AI company Anthropic — the maker of Claude — signed a deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to use the giant Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee, with 220,000 chips and 300 megawatts of computing power. The next day, Musk announced he was dissolving his own AI company, xAI (maker of the Grok chatbot), and folding it into SpaceX as a new product line called “SpaceXAI.” The two men had been bitter rivals — Musk previously called Anthropic a company that “hates Western civilization.” After meeting Anthropic’s team last week, he changed his tune. The timing matters: SpaceX is preparing for what could be the biggest stock market debut in history, possibly valuing the company at $2 trillion. Renting out spare computing power is good for the IPO. xAI also struggled lately, with 11 of its 12 original co-founders having left the company. Boris Cherny [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/boris.jpg] Boris Cherny, the engineer who created Claude Code at Anthropic, gave a talk last week at Sequoia Capital’s AI Ascent 2026 conference that has tech and finance circles buzzing. His main claim: for him, programming is “solved.” Cherny, a veteran software engineer who literally wrote textbooks on coding, revealed he hasn’t written a single line of code by hand in 2026. Instead, he ships dozens of changes a day — from his phone — by directing AI agents that do the actual writing. He runs five to ten parallel sessions at once, plus thousands of background tasks overnight. Cherny compared the moment to the invention of the printing press in the 1400s, but moving much faster. He also predicted that the number of disruptive startups will grow tenfold over the next decade, because small teams can now build things that used to require huge companies. Coding, he said, is becoming everyone’s job. agents [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/agents.jpeg] The AI Ascent 2026 conference held by venture firm Sequoia Capital in San Francisco on April 20, brought together more than 150 of the biggest names in artificial intelligence. The host firm declared 2026 “the year of agents” — AI programs that can perceive, plan, and complete tasks on their own, not just answer questions. OpenAI president Greg Brockman said that over a single month last December, AI tools jumped from writing 20% of new computer code to 80%. Demis Hassabis, the Nobel Prize-winning CEO of Google DeepMind, said he believes AGI — artificial general intelligence, AI as smart as any human at any task — is achievable by 2030, and that drug discovery could collapse from ten years to days. Andrej Karpathy, who co-founded OpenAI, argued that we’re entering “Software 3.0,” where many traditional apps simply won’t need to exist anymore. AGI [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/agi.jpeg] Something unusual is happening in Silicon Valley: top tech executives are quitting their high-ranking jobs to take regular engineering roles at AI company Anthropic. Peter Bailis left his job as chief technology officer of Workday, a $50 billion enterprise software company, to become a “member of technical staff” — basically, a regular engineer. Bryan McCann, co-founder and CTO of AI startup You.com, did the same. Mike Krieger, the co-founder of Instagram, switched from an executive role at Anthropic to an engineering one. Normally, executives don’t trade their corner offices for engineer desks. So why are they doing it? One working theory: these tech veterans believe AGI — artificial general intelligence, the holy grail of AI research — may be arriving soon, and they want a front-row seat when it happens. GLOBAL cruise [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/ship.jpg] A rare and deadly virus broke out on the cruise ship MV Hondius in the South Atlantic earlier this month, killing three passengers and sickening several others. The culprit is hantavirus, a virus normally carried by wild rodents like mice and rats. Most strains spread to humans through contact with rodent droppings, but this one — the Andes strain — is the only hantavirus that can also pass between people. The ship was stranded off West Africa for days before being allowed to dock in the Canary Islands on May 10. The World Health Organization says the global risk is low. It’s not the next COVID. ECONOMY & FINANCE China Soccer [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/chinasoccer.jpeg] The 2026 World Cup kicks off June 11 in North America, but with about a month to go, there’s still no deal for it to air in China. FIFA reportedly asked China Media Group between $250 and $300 million for the rights, while CMG’s budget was closer to $60–80 million. Several things are working against a deal. The tournament is hosted across the US, Canada, and Mexico, meaning most matches kick off in the early hours Beijing time — brutal for viewers and a turnoff for advertisers. China’s national team also failed to qualify, eliminated by Indonesia last year, which has cooled domestic interest. Yet Chinese companies have already poured over $500 million into sponsoring this World Cup, according to Beijing Daily, and Chinese viewers made up nearly half of all digital viewing hours in 2022. A blackout would sting both sides. Buffett [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/buffett.jpeg] On May 2, tens of thousands of investors gathered in Omaha, Nebraska, for the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting — an event so famous in finance circles it’s nicknamed “Woodstock for Capitalists.” This year was different. For the first time in six decades, the meeting wasn’t headlined by Warren Buffett, the legendary 95-year-old investor often called the greatest of all time. Buffett took over Berkshire Hathaway in 1965 when it was a failing textile company. Over the next 60 years, he turned it into a giant conglomerate that owns insurance companies, railroads, See’s Candies, and big stakes in Apple and Coca-Cola. The numbers are staggering: Berkshire’s stock returned 19.9% per year on average — nearly double the S&P 500’s 10.4%. A $100 investment in 1965 would be worth over $5.5 million today. Buffett stepped down as CEO in January but still showed up, sitting in the front row. NATURE & ENVIRONMENT New Orleans [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/neworleans.jpg] A new study published on May 4 in the journal Nature Sustainability warns that New Orleans, one of America’s most beloved cities, has reached a “point of no return.” Researchers at Tulane University say rising seas and sinking land have grown so severe that southern Louisiana is losing an area the size of a football field every 100 minutes. Since the 1930s, the state has lost coastal land roughly equal in size to the state of Delaware. The scientists say the city likely won’t exist by the end of the next century, and they’re calling for governments to start planning now for the long-term relocation of residents. SCIENCE Apollo 17 [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/apollo17.jpg] On Friday, the Pentagon released its first batch of declassified UFO files — 162 documents pulled from the FBI, State Department, NASA, and other agencies, posted on a new public website called PURSUE (Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters). UAP, or “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” is the modern term for UFOs. Some of the more eye-catching items: an Apollo 17 photo from 1972 showing three small dots in a triangular formation above the lunar surface, with the Pentagon noting new analysis suggests it could be “a physical object in the scene.” Apollo 12 photos show similar bright spots near the moon’s horizon, and a transcript captures astronaut Buzz Aldrin describing “little flashes” inside the Apollo 11 cabin. Researchers say nothing in the batch is a smoking gun. More tranches are promised every few weeks. Stay tuned. MATH Square [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/square.jpg] This rectangle consists of 6 squares. Two of them on the bottom right are of the same size. The smallest square in the center has an area of 4. What is the total area for the rectangle? LIFESTYLE, ENTERTAINMENT & CULTURE Mother’s Day [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/motherday.jpg] This Sunday, May 10, is Mother’s Day in the US, China, Japan, Australia, and dozens of other countries that mark it on the second Sunday of May. Over 100 countries celebrate some version of it, though the date shifts — the UK had Mothering Sunday back in March, and Thailand waits until August 12. Some numbers worth knowing: Americans will spend roughly $38 billion this year, and Mother’s Day generates more phone calls than any other day on the calendar — about 122 million. You don’t need to spend anything. A handwritten note, a hug, or doing the dishes without being asked counts. Mom will remember it longer than flowers. Pulitzer [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/pulitzer.jpg] The 2026 Pulitzer Prizes were announced on May 4 in New York. The Pulitzers, awarded since 1917, are considered the highest honor in American journalism, books, drama, and music. Twenty-three prizes are given out each year. The fiction winner was Angel Down by Daniel Kraus, a novel about World War I soldiers who find a fallen angel in No Man’s Land — and the whole story is written as one long sentence. The history prize went to Harvard professor Jill Lepore for We the People, a book about the U.S. Constitution. The biography prize went to Amanda Vaill for Pride and Pleasure, about the Schuyler sisters, who played important roles during the American Revolution. The memoir prize went to celebrated Chinese-American writer Yiyun Li for Things in Nature Merely Grow. The poetry prize went to Juliana Spahr for Ars Poeticas. I Am Legend [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/legend.jpg] Hollywood is finally moving forward on I Am Legend 2, the long-awaited sequel to the 2007 post-apocalyptic thriller starring Will Smith. Will Smith and Michael B. Jordan are both attached to star. The original film, based on a 1954 novel by Richard Matheson, follows a scientist named Robert Neville who is one of the last people alive in New York City after a virus turns the rest of humanity into vampire-like creatures. Smith’s character died in the theatrical version of the original, but the sequel will follow an alternate ending where he survives. The new story will pick up decades later, with nature reclaiming the city, asking what happens to the world when humans are no longer in charge. No release date has been announced yet. SPORTS Arsenal [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/cup.jpg] [Soccer] Arsenal, one of England’s most famous football clubs, is on the brink of a historic season. With just a few matches left in the Premier League, they sit on top of the table, two points ahead of Manchester City. If they hold on, it will be their first league title in 22 years — since the legendary 2003-04 “Invincibles” team that went an entire season without losing a single game. At the same time, Arsenal just reached the Champions League final for the first time in club history. They’ll play Paris Saint-Germain in Budapest on May 30. Arsenal has never won the Champions League in their 140-year history. Winning both trophies in the same season is called the “European double” — one of the rarest and most prestigious achievements in club football. Manager Mikel Arteta, who used to play for Arsenal himself, took charge of a struggling team in December 2019 and has patiently rebuilt it over six seasons into one of the best in Europe. Snooker [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/snooker.jpg] [Snooker] On May 4, 22-year-old Chinese snooker player Wu Yize won the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England — the sport’s most prestigious tournament. He beat former champion Shaun Murphy 18-17 in a final that came down to the very last frame, and became the second-youngest world champion in snooker history. Only Stephen Hendry, who won at 21 in 1990, was younger. Wu’s win continues a remarkable surge of Chinese snooker. Last year, Zhao Xintong became the first Chinese player ever to win the title. This year, a record 11 Chinese players reached the last 32. China is taking over the green baize. Table Tennis [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/tabletennis.JPG] [Table Tennis] The world’s best table tennis teams gathered in London this week for the ITTF World Team Championships, a special centenary edition held in the city where the tournament was first played in 1926. China’s women, six-time defending champions, swept through the tournament without dropping a single game and set up a Sunday final against Japan — their sixth showdown in a row dating back to 2012. The men had a wobblier ride, losing twice in the group stage, including a stunning defeat to Sweden, before recovering to make the semifinals. Both finals are on Sunday, May 10, with China still favored. sinner [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/sinner.jpg] [Tennis] On May 3, Italy’s Jannik Sinner won the Madrid Open, beating Germany’s Alexander Zverev 6-1, 6-2 in a one-sided final. With the win, the 24-year-old world No. 1 became the first male player ever to win five Masters 1000 titles in a row. The Masters 1000 are the nine biggest tennis tournaments outside of the four Grand Slams, and Sinner’s streak now includes Paris, Indian Wells, Miami, Monte-Carlo, and Madrid. Even legends like Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal had only managed four in a row. Sinner heads to Rome next week chasing his sixth straight, on his way to the French Open later this month. Wembanyama [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/wembanyama.jpeg] [Basketball] The NBA playoffs are heating up. In the East, the New York Knicks are 3-0 against the Philadelphia 76ers, including a stunning 137-98 Game 1 blowout. New York hasn’t reached the Conference Finals since 2000, but they look unstoppable this year. In the West, France’s Victor Wembanyama is showing why everyone thinks he might be the future of the NBA. The 7'4" 22-year-old led the San Antonio Spurs past Minnesota in Game 2 by a 38-point margin and now leads the series 2-1. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Lakers are in trouble. They’re down 0-2 to the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder and have lost both games by double digits. LeBron James, now 41, and his teammates need to find an answer fast in Game 3 on Sunday. The Conference Finals start later this month, with the NBA Finals scheduled to begin on June 4. THIS DAY IN HISTORY Rolling Stones [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/rollingstones.jpeg] On May 10, 1963, five young Londoners walked into Olympic Sound Studios and recorded their first single — a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On.” Their manager admitted he had no idea what he was doing, and lead singer Mick Jagger called the group “a bunch of bloody amateurs”. Those amateurs were the Rolling Stones, one of the biggest bands in rock history alongside the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. While the Beatles broke up in 1970 and Zeppelin disbanded in 1980, the Stones kept going — and going. They’re now 64 years into their career, the longest run of any major rock band. Founding members Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are both 82. Their 2024 Hackney Diamonds tour sold out stadiums across North America, though they recently scrapped a planned 2026 tour because Richards’ arthritis made the schedule too tough. ART OF THE WEEK Persistence of Memory [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/memory.jpeg] Salvador Dalí was a Spanish artist famous for his curled mustache, wild personality, and even wilder paintings. He was a leading figure in Surrealism, an art movement from the 1920s that tried to paint dreams, the unconscious mind, and impossible scenes — basically, the strange logic that takes over when you’re asleep. What made Dalí great was his technical skill: he painted bizarre, dreamlike images with the precision of a Renaissance master, so the impossible looked completely real. His most famous work, The Persistence of Memory (1931), shows soft, melting clocks draped over a tree branch, a square block, and a strange sleeping creature in a quiet desert landscape. Dalí said the idea came from watching a wedge of Camembert cheese melt in the sun. The painting is surprisingly small — about the size of a sheet of paper. Maybe time isn’t as solid as we think. FUNNY picture [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/double-wins-for-arsenal-in-2026/picture.JPG] ---------------------------------------- PREVIOUS ISSUES ---------------------------------------- May 03, 2026, The Way You Make Me Feel [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel] April 26, 2026, Game Is No. 1, Friendship is No. 14 [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/game-is-no-1-friendship-is-no-14] April 19, 2026, Robots Run Faster Than Humans Now [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/robots-run-faster-than-humans-now] ---------------------------------------- Thanks for reading! If you enjoy this newsletter, please share it with friends who might also find it interesting and refreshing, if not for themselves, at least for their kids.

The Way You Make Me Feel

EDITOR’S WORDS I was watching MJ’s biopic “Michael” in Kerry Center’s movie theatre. In the swimming pool scene, Michael is lying comfortably in a floater and one of his brothers asks him, what are you dreaming about Michael? Michael goes, I’m hoping God could give me more ideas and inspiration, otherwise they all go to Prince. I was LOLing loudly in the theatre. This writer is good. I’m a big fan to both MJ and Prince and have been to their live concerts (MJ’s in Singapore and Prince’s in Boston). It was a blessing to have lived through the 80’s and 90’s to witness the last breed of true superstars who redefined what music is and could be. And how interesting it is that MJ’s music (especially Beat It) is enjoying a strong comeback in one of the prestigious international schools in Shanghai, among the 10-years olds. TECH David Silver [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/davidsilver.jpg] A new AI startup based in London has just raised $1.1 billion in seed funding — the very first round of money a startup raises from outside investors — at a $5.1 billion valuation. That makes it the largest seed round in European history. The company is called Ineffable Intelligence, and it was founded by David Silver, one of the most respected AI researchers alive. Silver led the team at Google DeepMind that built AlphaGo, the program that famously beat the world’s best Go player in 2016. His new company will pursue a different approach to AI: building systems that learn from experience instead of from human-written text. Stripe [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/stripe.jpg] Stripe is one of the most important companies on the internet that you’ve probably never heard of. It builds the technology that lets businesses accept payments online — when you buy something from Amazon or Shopify, Stripe is often quietly running in the background. This week at its annual conference in San Francisco, Stripe announced 288 new products. What made it remarkable is that Stripe is now chasing three of the biggest prizes in tech all at once. First, AI: through partnerships with Google, OpenAI, and Meta, your AI chatbot will soon be able to shop and pay for things on your behalf. Second, crypto: Stripe expanded its stablecoin services to over 150 countries, letting businesses send digital dollars across borders almost instantly. Third, plain old finance: Stripe is now valued at $159 billion, making it one of the most valuable private companies in the world. Few companies are racing on all three tracks — and winning. GLOBAL Iranian Boy [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/iranianboy.jpg] [China] In Shaoxing, a city in eastern China, an 8-year-old Iranian boy named Radin walked back into his classroom last week to a swarm of hugs from his Chinese classmates. He had been gone for more than three months. Radin left China in mid-January to visit Iran with his father, and told his teacher in late February he’d be back in about three weeks. Then conflict broke out in Iran, communication was cut off, and his classmates didn’t hear from him for 42 days. The video of his return — kids running across the room to grab him — went viral across Chinese social media. Chonkers [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/chonkers.jpg] A 2,000-pound sea lion named Chonkers has become San Francisco’s unlikeliest celebrity this spring. He showed up at Pier 39, a famous tourist dock, in mid-March and decided to stay. Chonkers is a Steller sea lion, a much bigger species than the California sea lions that usually lounge there — about twice their size, closer in build to a bear than a sea lion. When he hauls himself onto the dock, the smaller sea lions scatter to get out of his way. Crowds of over a hundred now gather every morning just to watch him sleep. Sheila [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/sheila.jpg] Englishman Ollie Jenks and his Canadian friend Seth Scott just set a Guinness World Record for the longest journey ever completed in a three-wheeled car. They drove a Reliant Robin — a tiny, wobbly British car from the 1970s, originally designed for short trips to the local grocery store — all the way from London to Cape Town, South Africa. That’s 14,000 miles across 22 countries, taking more than four months. They named the car Sheila. Even Sheila’s original designer was reportedly too scared to drive her more than 20 miles. Things broke constantly: the engine had to be replaced in Cameroon, the gearbox in Ghana, and Sheila once had to be loaded onto a cattle truck after a breakdown. The pair drove through deserts, past elephants, alongside galloping giraffes, and even arrived in Benin during an attempted coup. Sheila will now be displayed in the London Transport Museum. Bridge [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/bridge.JPG] On April 28, Guinness World Records officially certified the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge in southwest China as the tallest bridge in the world. Its deck sits 626 meters (about 2,054 feet) above the Beipan River below — high enough that the entire Empire State Building could fit underneath with room to spare. The bridge opened in September 2025 in Guizhou, one of China’s most mountainous and historically isolated provinces. A drive that used to take two hours of winding mountain roads now takes just two minutes. China is now home to the world’s seven tallest bridges, with three of them in Guizhou alone. ECONOMY & FINANCE KOSPI [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/kospi.jpg] South Korea’s stock market is having an extraordinary year. The KOSPI, the country’s main stock index (similar to the S&P 500 in the US), started January 2026 at 4,300 and crossed 6,750 last week — a gain of more than 55% in just four months. That kind of jump is rare for a major economy. The rally has been driven mostly by the global boom in artificial intelligence, since Korean firms like Samsung Electronics and SK hynix make the advanced memory chips that AI systems rely on. Some global investment banks now think the KOSPI could reach 8,000 before year-end. NATURE & ENVIRONMENT India’s heat wave [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/heatwaves.jpeg] India is going through one of its hottest pre-summer stretches on record. Since mid-April, temperatures across the north and centre of the country have pushed past 45°C (113°F), with some cities expected to top 46°C (115°F) in the coming days. The India Meteorological Department, the country’s official weather agency, has issued heat alerts across states including Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Odisha. According to recent reports, 95 of the world’s 100 hottest cities right now are in India. Schools have shortened hours, and farmers have been told to harvest wheat early before the heat ruins their crops. El Nino [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/elnino.jpg] Scientists are warning that a “Super El Niño” is likely to develop later this year, and it could reshape the world’s weather into 2027. El Niño is a natural climate pattern that happens every few years when the surface of the Pacific Ocean near the equator gets unusually warm. That extra heat changes wind, rainfall, and storm patterns across the planet. A “Super” El Niño is the strongest version, with ocean temperatures more than 2°C above normal. The expected impacts: heavier rain and flooding in California and South America, droughts and wildfires in Australia and Indonesia, a quieter Atlantic hurricane season, and 2026 likely setting another global heat record. SCIENCE Voyager 1 [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/voyager1.jpeg] Voyager 1 is a NASA spacecraft launched in 1977 — almost 49 years ago — and now the most distant human-made object in existence, more than 16 billion miles from Earth in interstellar space (the region between stars). It runs on a tiny nuclear power source that loses about 4 watts every year, so engineers have been switching off instruments one by one to keep the probe alive. On April 17, NASA powered down another one. The team’s goal is to nurse Voyager 1 to its 50th birthday in 2027 and beyond, possibly into the 2030s, as it drifts deeper into uncharted space. MATH Math [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/math.jpg] How much is the angle in red? math problem [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/mathproblem.jpg] A 23-year-old named Liam Price, with no advanced math training, just helped crack a math problem that has stumped professional mathematicians for 60 years. He did it using ChatGPT. The problem was posed in the 1960s by Paul Erdős, one of the most famous mathematicians of the 20th century, and concerns a special type of number set. Price simply typed the problem into ChatGPT, and the AI produced a proof in about 80 minutes — using a method no human had ever tried for this kind of problem. Terence Tao, one of the greatest living mathematicians, reviewed it and said the AI found a path that humans had collectively missed for decades. LIFESTYLE, ENTERTAINMENT & CULTURE Michael Jackson [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/michael.jpg] The new Michael Jackson biopic, simply titled “Michael,” opened in theaters on April 24 and immediately broke records. It pulled in roughly $97 million in the United States and $218 million worldwide in just its first weekend — the biggest opening ever for a music biopic, beating “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Straight Outta Compton,” and even topping last year’s “Oppenheimer” for any biopic. The lead role is played by Jaafar Jackson, Michael’s real-life nephew, who bears a striking resemblance to him. Critics gave the film mixed reviews, but audiences turned up anyway, drawn mostly by the music. A sequel is already being discussed. May 04 [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/may04.jpg] Tomorrow is May 4, also known as Star Wars Day. The reason is a simple pun: “May the Fourth” sounds like “May the Force” — as in the famous Star Wars line, “May the Force be with you.” Fans started making the joke as early as 1979, just two years after the first Star Wars film came out. It grew into an unofficial holiday over the decades, and Disney officially embraced it after buying Lucasfilm in 2012. Today, fans across the world dress up as Jedi, rewatch the films, and greet each other with “May the Fourth be with you.” SPORTS PSG [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/psg.jpg] [Soccer] On April 28, Paris Saint-Germain beat Bayern Munich 5-4 in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League semifinal — the highest-scoring semifinal match in the tournament’s history. The Champions League is the top club soccer competition in Europe, where the best teams from every country face off each year. The game in Paris was chaos from the opening minutes. Bayern’s England striker Harry Kane converted a penalty in the 17th minute, and his teammate Michael Olise made it 2-1 to the visitors before halftime. Then PSG exploded. Georgia’s Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and France’s Ousmane Dembélé each scored twice, including two goals in three minutes after halftime to make it 5-2. Bayern refused to die — defender Dayot Upamecano and forward Luis Díaz pulled two goals back in three minutes. PSG, the defending champions, take a one-goal lead into the second leg in Munich next week. Evan Liu [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/evansliu.jpg] [Rubik’s Cube] In a small-town gymnasium in Falls City, Nebraska, 51 speedcubers gathered April 10–12 for the third annual Nebraska Championship — a Rubik’s Cube competition sanctioned by the World Cube Association. Competitors raced through 17 events, from the classic 3x3x3 cube to puzzles solved blindfolded, one-handed, or with the fewest possible moves. Jayben Keene took the marquee 3x3 title with an average of 8.68 seconds across five solves. The weekend’s standout, though, was Evan Liu, who won seven events including the 5x5, 6x6, 7x7, and an extraordinary blindfolded multi-cube round in which he memorized 15 cubes and solved 13 from memory in under an hour. Pogacar [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/pogacar.jpeg] [Cycling] On April 26, two cyclists put on a show at Liège–Bastogne–Liège, one of the oldest and toughest one-day races in the world (about 260 km through the Belgian Ardennes hills). The favorite, Slovenian world champion Tadej Pogačar, launched his usual brutal attack on the steep Côte de la Redoute climb. Most riders cracked instantly. But one stayed glued to his wheel: Paul Seixas, a 19-year-old French rookie sensation. The two opened a huge gap, climbing in lockstep. Pogačar eventually broke away in the final kilometers to win solo, but Seixas held on for second — announcing himself as cycling’s next big star that could potentially challenge Pogacar’s supremacy. Hyrox [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/hyrox.jpg] [Hyrox] A new fitness sport called HYROX is taking over New York City. HYROX is a race that mixes running with strength workouts: athletes run 1 kilometer, then do a tough exercise like sled pushes, rowing, or wall balls (throwing a heavy ball at a wall). They repeat that eight times. It started in Germany in 2017 and has exploded worldwide. Next month, NYC will host the largest HYROX event in North American history, with 50,000 athletes competing across eight days at Pier 76 on the Hudson River. Gyms across the city are filling up with people training for it, and HYROX has quickly become one of the fastest-growing sports in the world. Ice Hockey [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/icehockey.jpg] [Ice Hockey] For years, ice hockey has quietly become one of the most reliable ways for international students to get into top American universities. Many families at elite schools in Europe, Canada, and Asia have invested heavily in hockey training, knowing that a strong player can earn a spot at schools like Harvard, Yale, or Michigan. But last week the NCAA, which runs US college sports, announced a major rule change. A player’s college eligibility clock will now start the year they turn 19 — regardless of when they actually enroll. The problem: school systems in Europe and Quebec don’t line up with the American K-12 calendar, so many foreign students will arrive at college already having lost a year or two of eligibility before they’ve even played a game. lakers [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/lakers.jpeg] [NBA] The first round of the NBA playoffs is wrapping up, and it’s been full of upsets. The defending Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics, led by superstar Jayson Tatum, were knocked out in seven games by the #7 seed Philadelphia 76ers, powered by a healthy Joel Embiid. The Denver Nuggets, with three-time MVP Nikola Jokić, were eliminated by the Minnesota Timberwolves. Out west, French phenom Victor Wembanyama and his San Antonio Spurs cruised past Portland, LeBron James’s Lakers beat the Houston Rockets, and the league-best Oklahoma City Thunder swept the Phoenix Suns. The New York Knicks also advanced, beating the Atlanta Hawks. THIS DAY IN HISTORY Spider Man [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/spider-man.jpeg] On May 3, 2002 — exactly 24 years ago today — the first Spider-Man movie hit theaters in the United States. Directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, the film was the first movie ever to make more than $100 million in a single opening weekend. It went on to earn over $825 million worldwide. Before Spider-Man, Hollywood treated comic book movies as risky and a bit silly. After it, every major studio rushed to make their own. Without Spider-Man’s success, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Iron Man, the Avengers, Black Panther) and the modern superhero boom probably wouldn’t exist. ART OF THE WEEK Spot Paintings [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/spotpaintings.jpg] Damien Hirst is one of the most famous — and most controversial — living artists in the world. The British artist made his name in the 1990s with shocking works like a real shark preserved in a tank of formaldehyde. But his most recognizable series is much simpler: the Spot Paintings. Each one is a grid of perfectly round, brightly colored dots on a white background, with the rule that no two dots in a single painting can be the same color. Hirst started making them in 1986 and has produced over 1,400 since — though most weren’t actually painted by him. He hires assistants to do the painting, which raises a real question: who’s the artist? FUNNY Kenzaburo [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/kenzaburo.jpg] Kenzaburō Ōe was a Japanese writer who, as a child, told his mother he would one day win the Nobel Prize in Physics. He grew up, studied French literature instead of physics, and became one of Japan’s most celebrated novelists. In 1994, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He proudly went to his mother and said, “See? I kept my promise. I won the Nobel Prize.” Her reply: “No. You promised it would be in physics.” Seven [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/seven.jpg] Why is Six afraid of Seven? Because Seven, Eight (“ate”), Nine Game [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/the-way-you-make-me-feel/game.jpg] ---------------------------------------- PREVIOUS ISSUES ---------------------------------------- April 26, 2026, Game Is No. 1, Friendship is No. 14 [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/game-is-no-1-friendship-is-no-14] April 19, 2026, Robots Run Faster Than Humans Now [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/robots-run-faster-than-humans-now] April 11, 2026, Build A Second Brain to Compound Knowledge Learning [https://weekly.sundayblender.com/p/build-a-second-brain-to-compound-knowledge-learning] ---------------------------------------- Thanks for reading! 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