Tuesday, August 11, 2026

• Trump is claiming "total control" of the Strait of Hormuz and demanding Iran pay reparations as the standoff drags oil above $84 a barrel.
• Futures are green across the board, VIX sits calm near 15.5, but the 10-year yield is creeping up toward 4.70%.
• Watch Wednesday's Core CPI print — the first real read on whether the oil-driven inflation risk is showing up in the data.

• $500 billion — the amount Wall Street giants are committing to Nvidia-linked AI projects, per the BBC. That's a fresh scale marker for how much institutional capital is now flowing directly into AI infrastructure buildouts, even as Nvidia's own stock ticked down premarket.

1. 1

   Trump's secret exit from Turkey summit over Iran threat — Reports say Trump used an elaborate ruse to fly out of Turkey following a summit, reportedly over a specific Iran threat. Details remain thin on what exactly triggered it. Reaction is mostly bewilderment at the cloak-and-dagger optics of a sitting president's travel plans. (AP News) link

2. 2

   Progressive primaries loom in Minnesota and Wisconsin — Competitive primaries in both states will test whether the progressive wave that's been reshaping Democratic politics this year has real staying power. It's the latest flashpoint in an ongoing intra-party fight over direction. Watchers see it as a bellwether for 2026 midterm positioning. (NPR) link

3. 3

   Trump signs order limiting childhood vaccines, splitting MMR shot — A new executive order aims to limit childhood vaccine schedules and separate the combined MMR shot into individual doses. It's a major shift in federal vaccine policy with immediate implications for pediatric care. Public health voices are already pushing back hard, while parental-choice advocates are cheering. (BBC) link

4. 4

   Colombia earthquake death toll climbs to 132 — The magnitude-7.4 quake's confirmed death toll rose to 132 as rescue teams continue searching rubble. It's now one of the deadliest earthquakes to hit the country in recent memory. International aid and rescue coverage is intensifying. (CNN) link

5. 5

   Trump demands Iran pay reparations over Hormuz — Trump is claiming "total control" of the Strait of Hormuz and demanding Iranian reparations as the standoff deepens, with no resolution in sight. It signals the diplomatic track is stalling further. Oil markets and Gulf allies are watching nervously. (CNBC) link

6. 6

   Mamdani's luxury-home tax rollout blocked, for now — A judge delivered NYC homeowners a win by derailing the rollout of a proposed luxury-home tax list, at least temporarily. It's a setback for the incoming administration's revenue plans. Homeowner groups are calling it a vindication; supporters call it a delay tactic. (Fox News) link

7. 7

   Assad sentenced to death in absentia — Former Syrian President Assad has been sentenced to death in absentia, capping his ousted regime's formal legal reckoning. It's largely symbolic given he's not in custody, but significant for Syria's transitional justice process. Reaction inside Syria has been mixed between vindication and skepticism it changes anything on the ground. (AP News) link

8. 8

   Oil tops $84 as Hormuz deal hopes fade — U.S. crude crossed $84 a barrel as hopes for a Hormuz resolution keep dwindling and the deadlock deepens. It's a direct market read on how seriously traders are taking the standoff. Energy stocks and inflation-watchers are both paying close attention. (CNBC) link

9. 9

   Powerball jackpot nears $1 billion — No one won the $905 million grand prize, pushing the jackpot toward $1 billion. It's the year's biggest lottery run so far. The usual mix of dreamers and skeptics is out in force online. (Yahoo) link

10. 10

    Zuckerberg surprised at AI "doom" discourse — Mark Zuckerberg says he's surprised at how gloom-filled the AI industry's internal discourse has become. It comes as Meta pushes its own open-model strategy. Some read it as genuine puzzlement, others as PR positioning against rivals leaning into safety warnings. (Variety) link

• This week / by September — Senate delays the college sports reform (Protect College Sports Act) vote to September; NCAA regulatory clarity keeps getting pushed out.
• Ongoing — Fallout continues from the Supreme Court's tariff ruling, reportedly blowing a $200B hole in the budget and pushing the 2026 deficit toward $2.1 trillion.
• Ongoing — A new legal fight over birthright citizenship limits heads back toward the Supreme Court.
• Aug 12 — NFIB Small Business Optimism already beat (99.8 vs. 97.5 consensus); Existing Home Sales due (consensus 4.05M).
• Aug 13 — Core CPI (consensus 0.2%) — the week's key inflation read.
• Aug 14 — PPI and Initial Jobless Claims — wholesale prices and the labor market pulse.
• Aug 15 — Retail Sales and Michigan inflation expectations — the consumer-spending gauge.

• 🟢 S&P futures (ES): +0.15% 🟢 Nasdaq futures (NQ): +0.30% 🟢 Dow futures (YM): +0.07% 🟡 VIX: 15.48 (+0.13%) — still calm 🔺 10Y yield: ~4.70% (+0.84%) 🟡 DXY: 99.86 (flat) Futures are leaning green into the open, but rising yields alongside oil above $84 are the quiet risk to watch ahead of Wednesday's CPI.

• CB Employment Trends Index: 107.71 (up from 106.74)
• OPEC production data drawing attention given oil headlines: Iran cut to 2.55M bbl (from 3.00M), Iraq up to 2.85M (from 2.00M), Kuwait up to 1.95M (from 1.65M) No major US macro releases (CPI/jobs/retail) land until later this week.

• SE (Sea Limited, pre-market) — $69.5B cap, EPS consensus $0.78 vs. $0.65 a year ago.
• CAH (Cardinal Health, pre-market) — $55.4B cap, EPS consensus $2.42 vs. $2.08.
• CRWV (CoreWeave, after-hours) — $49.5B cap, expected to post a wider loss (-$1.67 vs. -$0.54); a bellwether for AI-cloud infrastructure demand right as Nvidia lands a $500B AI commitment.
• LITE (Lumentum, after-hours) — $69.3B cap, EPS consensus $2.62 vs. $0.32 last year — a huge implied jump tied to optical/AI infrastructure demand.
• ONON (On Holding, pre-market) — $24B cap, EPS consensus $0.38 vs. -$0.15.

• SCKT $2.13 (+451.67%) — no catalyst in today's data.
• JWEL $4.00 (+158.06%) — no catalyst in today's data.
• STKH $4.30 (+128.72%) — no catalyst in today's data.
• SION $4.50 (-91.18%) — no catalyst in today's data.
• TENX $1.375 (-89.77%) — no catalyst in today's data.
• NVDA — 116.6M shares traded, down 2.13% even as Wall Street commits $500B to its AI projects.
• ACHR — up 11.29% on heavy volume amid broader eVTOL trading activity.
• INTC — down 4.02% on elevated volume; no catalyst in today's data.

• EVTL — extreme bearish skew, puts outweighing calls 36-to-1, led by 20,310 contracts of Aug 21 $1.50 puts against just 2,917 open interest.
• AAPL — unusual put buying at the $332.50 strike (46x volume-to-open-interest) into Aug 14 expiry, well out of the money.
• PLTR — elevated two-way flow (put/call ratio 0.62), heavy short-dated action at the $177.50 strike on both sides.
• Insider cluster: DPC — 9 insiders bought a combined $75.8M, lifting ownership +410%.
• Insider cluster: SCTX — 6 insiders bought $71.3M, ownership up +114%.

• 🔻 BTC: $64,345 (-1.11%) 🔻 XRP: $1.007 (-2.52%) 🔻 ETH: $1,892.15 (-1.37%) Crypto's bleeding red across the board this morning, tracking the same risk-off creep showing up in bond yields.

• 30-year fixed mortgage: 6.69% as of Aug 6 — holding roughly steady week over week.
• The single hottest ZIP code in the country right now, per Realtor.com data. (MarketWatch) link
• A New York ZIP code lands at No. 4 among the nation's hottest housing markets. (Lohud) link
• Homes in Cedar Rapids are going under contract in as little as 4 days. (thegazette.com) link

r/interesting

A grandson recorded his grandma’s nightly routine of checking every burner with a flashlight to make sure they’re all turned off

YouTube

MINECRAFT HARDCORE ALL BOSSES DAY 5🍄🔨🧟‍♂️ft. KaiCenat

r/cats

My cat Martin turned 16 years old and we did a photoshoot for him 🥰🤧🎂

YouTube

WE ARE NOT BACKING THE BLUE HERE! NO KOPPER SUCKING ROUND HERE

r/interestingasfuck

In 2024, customs enforcement teams at Istanbul Airport found this baby gorilla in a small crate. She was being smuggled from Nigeria to Bangkok.

YouTube

KAI & SPEED HARDCORE MINECRAFT MARATHON ⛏️🧱 BEATING ALL BOSSES | DAY 4 PART 2

• Reddit
• r/interesting — A grandson's video of his grandma's nightly ritual of checking every burner with a flashlight. post
• r/cats — A 16-year-old cat named Martin gets a birthday photoshoot. post
• r/interestingasfuck — Customs at Istanbul Airport found a baby gorilla smuggled from Nigeria to Bangkok in a crate. post
• r/mildlyinfuriating — A slow car meets an even slower driver. post
• r/interesting — A 5-year-old hamster gets its moment. post
• YouTube
• IShowSpeed — "MINECRAFT HARDCORE ALL BOSSES DAY 5" ft. KaiCenat (37.9K views). watch
• Delete Lawz — police-accountability commentary (964 views). watch
• Kai Cenat Live — Hardcore Minecraft marathon Day 4 Part 2 (15.5K views). watch
• Blu Radio — Live coverage of Colombia earthquake rescue efforts (29.9K views). watch
• NBC News — Live news stream for Aug. 11 (2.6K views). watch
• Instagram
• Detroit Free Press reporters preview the 2026 Michigan high school football season. story
• Actor Chiyaan Vikram is under forest department investigation after a viral video with an endangered lar gibbon. story
• Fake AI ads in a NYC subway station have united commuters in mutual hatred. story
• Women from Drake's viral dating contest speak on what they really thought of him. story
• A viral video of a man struggling to walk, allegedly from Kpod use, has netizens fuming — for a different reason. story
• X
• Colombia — likely tied to earthquake rescue coverage. live
• Good Tuesday (live)
• #WWERAW (live)
• #Madden27 (live)
• Woke 1 (live)
• Google Trends
• luigi mangione (200+) — a court hearing over media livestream access. story
• tulsa little league (2000+) — a restraining order clears the way for a Tulsa team to play for an LLWS bid. story
• stock (500+) — futures little changed as investors weigh Iran/Hormuz deal prospects. story
• tomb (200+) — a 2,400-year-old grave of a possible ancient pro wrestler found in Turkey. story
• 76ers (100+) — Hilary Duff drew a LeBron comparison after a Philadelphia concert. story
• A photo album with today's Reddit/YouTube visuals lands right after this brief.

• Brad Pitt says he's drinking again after seven years of sobriety, though "not in big quantities." (LA Times) link
• Jon Hamm is reportedly about to become a father, per new signals from close reports. (The Cut) link
• Barack Obama is launching a new podcast, "A Great Book," expanding his media footprint. (NYT) link
• Jury selection begins in the Tupac Shakur murder trial, with the ex-gang leader charged in the 1996 killing finally headed to court. (Reuters) link
• Blueface and Chrisean Rock pulled over in San Diego for equipment violations, per police. (TMZ) link

• Lead: Needle2, a 14MB agentic LLM built for phones, wearables, smart-home devices, and robots — a bid to run genuinely capable AI models locally on tiny hardware rather than in the cloud. Other notable items:
• LFM2.5 is a 2.6B-parameter open model that Liquid AI claims is competitive with models 4x its size.
• Zuckerberg is pushing Meta back toward open-weight models, publicly criticizing "closed" AI rivals.
• Anthropic detailed how Claude now marks AI-generated content, a step toward provenance transparency.

• DONUT, a new real-time X-ray data analysis system at Argonne National Lab, is accelerating materials-science discovery by letting researchers analyze synchrotron data as it's collected instead of after the fact — potentially compressing years of materials research into a fraction of the time. link

• "Mister Anthony" — a deep narrative dive into racism and memory in Mississippi. Worth the 20 minutes if you want something with real texture rather than a headline scroll. read

• 2012 — At least 306 people were killed and 3,000 injured in a pair of earthquakes near Tabriz, Iran.

• Tomi Lahren (turns 34) — conservative political commentator.
• Marvin Harrison Jr. (turns 24) — NFL wide receiver.
• Alyson Stoner (turns 33) — actor, singer, and dancer.

• Chinese Wontons — pork, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, carrots, and celery. A quick weeknight project that's more fun assembled with a second set of hands. recipe

• Today, give an instruction once and then wait quietly for compliance instead of repeating it three times louder each time. Kids tune out repeated commands fast, but a single clear instruction followed by patient silence tends to get followed through more often than nagging does. Works well for ages 4-12.

What is the surname of one of the male teachers in the BBC series Postman Pat?

• Tell them: you have this thing where you make hard days feel shorter just by being around — that's not nothing, and today's a good day to say it out loud.