Trump to Xi, Ceasefire in Pieces, May 12

🇺🇸 US inflation hit 3.8% in April, the highest since May 2023, driven by energy costs from the Iran war. (BBC) 🇮🇷 Iran expanded its definition of the Strait of Hormuz into a "vast operational area," a senior IRGC officer said. (The Guardian) 🇮🇱 Israel approved a death penalty law for October 7 detainees. (Al Jazeera) 🇺🇦 A three-day ceasefire in Ukraine ended with fresh Russian drone strikes on energy facilities, killing at least one. (The Guardian) 🇬🇧 Three UK ministers resigned—Jess Phillips, Miatta Fahnbulleh, Alex Davies-Jones—after Starmer told cabinet he won't quit. (The Guardian) 💸 GameStop's $55.5bn bid for eBay was rejected as "neither credible nor attractive." (The Guardian) 💰 London-based blockchain analytics firm Elliptic raised $120M at a $670M valuation, screening over 1B transactions weekly. (Bloomberg/Techmeme) Quiet.

So here we are. The good news first: Stormzy is producing a biopic of football great Ian Wright, and the rapper's Merky Films wants the story to give people hope and joy. That's nice. Meanwhile, Spotify turned twenty and rolled out a Wrapped nostalgia bomb of never-before-shared data, which means we can all feel properly old while still paying for a subscription. And Irish TV will air Father Ted instead of the Eurovision final in protest of Israel's inclusion, which is probably the most genuinely Irish thing that's happened this decade. Sarkozy has nothing on a priest episode.

But look closer—the inflation number is the one that sits in the room. 3.8%. That's the highest since May 2023, which was the tail end of the post-Covid spike everyone thought was over. The Bureau of Labor Statistics data says energy costs from the Iran war did it. The Pentagon says the war has now cost around $29bn. Pete Hegseth and other officials faced a House grilling on that expenditure today, and the number is moving faster than anyone's comfortable with. You don't need to be an economist to feel what happens when a country bleeds that kind of money and then passes the bill to every gas pump and grocery aisle.

While the US burns cash in the Gulf, Iran quietly redrew the map. The Strait of Hormuz is no longer a narrow chokepoint—it's now a "vast operational area," according to a senior IRGC officer. That's the kind of language that means the next tanker that gets stopped won't be a surprise. It's a redefinition of reality by decree, and the market is already pricing it in. Dangote, Africa's richest man, is planning a new oil refinery in Mombasa. That's not a coincidence. That's the playbook: when the Gulf gets hot, build your own supply lines somewhere else.

In the Levant, Israel approved a death penalty law for October 7 detainees, and a Wall Street Journal report alleges Israel operated a covert military base inside Iraq during the war on Iran. Not a drone base in the desert. A base inside a sovereign country that wasn't supposed to be part of this fight. And in Ukraine, the three-day ceasefire everyone hoped would hold collapsed into drone strikes on apartment buildings. The Russia story refuses to end quietly—it just sits there, waiting for attention that's already split six ways.

In London, the Labour government is eating itself. Three ministers resigned today—Jess Phillips, Miatta Fahnbulleh, Alex Davies-Jones—after Starmer told his cabinet he wouldn't step down. Darren Jones, the chief secretary, was on the morning shows looking like a man who'd rather be anywhere else. The resignation letters are piling up, and the question isn't whether Starmer survives, but how long before someone forces the vote. Meanwhile, in Texas, federal agents found six people dead inside a shipping container near the railroad tracks. It was hot. They were immigrants. Nobody called it a crisis. Nobody resigns over that.

The connection nobody else will draw today is this: the $29bn the Pentagon spent on Iran—averaged out, that's roughly the same amount GameStop tried to spend on eBay in a single bid that got laughed out of the boardroom. One number is a war. The other is a video game retailer with delusions of grandeur. Both were rejected as unworkable, but only one leaves bodies in the sand. The inflation at 3.8% is the receipt. The whales off South Africa being hit by ships because the war rerouted maritime traffic—that's the collateral. And the Father Ted episode? It turns out the most honest response to a world on fire is to turn off the news and watch a fictional priest accidentally host Eurovision. RTÉ might be accused of antisemitism for it, but at least they're laughing while the ship burns.

The Pentagon spent $29bn. The air in the shipping container was still.