🪙 Crypto check
₿ BTC $77,318 📈 +1.9% (24h)
Ξ ETH $2,436 📈 +2.4% (24h)

😨/🤑 Fear & Greed: 71 — Greed

📦 AirTag inside a rare book led straight to an Amazon scanning facility

Booksellers had long suspected bulk orders were coming from AI companies. 404 Media hid an AirTag in a shipment — it ended up at an Amazon site where, employees confirmed, bindings are sliced off, pages scanned, and the books destroyed.

A 2025 US ruling deemed it lawful as "transformative" use of copyrighted material.

9to5Mac

🔋 Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 5 ships with user-replaceable batteries

Sennheiser's Momentum True Wireless 5 arrives September 3rd for $299.95: both the earbuds and case have user-replaceable batteries accessible with a small screwdriver. Battery life is up to 12 hours per charge, 40 hours total with the case, The Verge reports.

🎬 Okay so this actually happened

A Chinese animated film called *Niu Lai* came out on August 5th with some of the roughest 3D animation people had ever seen — viewers were calling the characters "ugly", "eerie", you get the idea. For its first ten days it was pulling in 200 yuan on a bad day. That's like thirty dollars.

Then it got memed. Hard.

Suddenly everyone wanted to go see the disaster in person, and on one Monday alone it sold nearly 300,000 tickets and made 8.2 million yuan. By the time the Associated Press picked up the story, the total gross had hit $2.5 million — against a budget that was clearly a few thousand dollars at most.

So yeah, the movie made over a thousand times its budget because the internet made fun of it. That's just how things work now I guess.

Collider

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PypDSyIRRSs

🧛 Okay so this is a whole thing

So, Astarion is a vampire companion from Baldur's Gate 3 — voiced by Neil Newbon — and ever since the game blew up in 2023, he's basically become one of the most analysed characters in recent gaming. People are still picking apart his backstory.

Now there's an official prequel novel coming, written by award-winning author T. Kingfisher. And on October 8th at New York Comic Con, Newbon and Kingfisher are doing a panel together — "Before Baldur's Gate 3: Astarion's Untold Story", 12:15 to 1:00 p.m. ET.

The focus is specifically on the parts the game barely touched: the nearly two centuries Astarion spent under Cazador's control. How Kingfisher approached writing that, how Newbon thinks about the character from the inside.

For anyone who's spent three years going through every scrap of lore, this panel is kind of a big deal.

Collider

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgTFtD2sHdE

📌 Daily Recap · Aug 22

📦 AirTag inside rare book exposed Amazon's scanning operation
🔋 Sennheiser's new earbuds let you swap batteries yourself
🎬 Notoriously ugly animated film somehow became a box office hit
🧛 Baldur's Gate 3 vampire Astarion is getting an official something

Forward this to whoever spent today in back-to-back meetings — they owe you one

CHEATKOTT - Your Daily News

🪙 Crypto check
₿ BTC $76,252 📉 -1.4% (24h)
Ξ ETH $2,394 📉 -1.6% (24h)

😨/🤑 Fear & Greed: 66 — Greed

💸 Bitcoin just hit an 11-week high

The US Treasury announced it's doubling its debt buyback operations — from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per round, starting September 9. Markets moved fast: Treasury yields dropped, stocks rallied, Bitcoin followed — up 6% to $69,749, the highest since June 2.

It's not debt repayment, just reshuffling maturities — Boockvar said so on CNBC. But markets heard "liquidity" and ran with it.

One thing keeping a lid on it: Bitfinex says stablecoin supplies on exchanges are down $14 billion since May. No dry powder, shaky rally. Via Cointelegraph.

💧 Liquid Death and Jason Kelce want your pee for AI data centers

Garage Beer and Liquid Death dropped an ad featuring former NFL star Jason Kelce pitching urine as a cooling solution for AI data centers — and selling a $18 mason jar to go with the bit. Already sold out. Fine print clarifies you should not actually mail any, as doing so is a federal offense. The campaign targets real criticism of data centers consuming millions of gallons of water daily for cooling, per IGN.

🎬 She's back — and the fandom hasn't exhaled yet

*Slow Horses* is Apple TV+'s spy series about Slough House, a dead-end MI6 department run by Gary Oldman's magnificently grumpy Jackson Lamb. In Season 1 (2022), Olivia Cooke's Sidonie Baker made a brief, unforgettable appearance before a very dramatic exit — the kind that fuels four seasons of collective audience denial.

The Season 6 trailer looks routine, then lands Sid in the final seconds. IGN reports an audible gasp. Fair.

Kyle Soller (*Andor*) plays the villain, Hugo Weaving is River's deeply unsettling father, and this season adapts two of Mick Herron's novels instead of the usual one. Premieres September 16.

Between Season 1 and now, Cooke became a *House of the Dragon* star. Slough House, it turns out, knows how to be patient.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZbJxpYHLuI

🎾 'Rafa' is the first non-English docuseries ever nominated for a Primetime Emmy

Netflix and Skydance Sports' four-part portrait of Rafael Nadal has made Emmy history — no non-English docuseries had received a Primetime nomination before this one.

Directed by Oscar-nominated Zach Heinzerling, the series opens in early 2024: Nadal ranked No. 652, chronic hip injury, nearly two years without a title. The career record behind him: 14 French Open titles, 912 consecutive weeks in the top 10.

The figure that anchors the whole series: the only Grand Slam Nadal ever won without pain was his first Roland Garros in 2004. By October that year he had a broken foot and a Mueller-Weiss syndrome diagnosis. He played for twenty more years.

'Rafa' is streaming on Netflix.

Variety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ31ScZSYFQ

📊 Tottenham in talks to sign Savinho and Marmoush from Man City

Spurs finished 17th last season — 48 Premier League goals in 38 games. De Zerbi has rebuilt the midfield, spending £185m on Tonali and Fernandes, but the attack remains the clear weak point.

BBC Sport reports that Tottenham are in talks with Manchester City over a double deal for Savinho and Omar Marmoush — two forwards who fell out of favour under Guardiola. City paid £89m combined for the pair and would expect a profit on both.

The complication is Spurs' simultaneous interest in Liverpool's Cody Gakpo. Funding all three moves at once would be a serious stretch — something likely has to give.

No agreement reached yet.

📌 Daily Recap · Aug 23

💸 Bitcoin surges 6% as Treasury doubles debt buybacks
💧 Liquid Death wants your pee to cool AI servers
🎬 Slow Horses brings back its most unforgettable character
🎾 Nadal doc makes Emmy history as first non-English nominee
📊 Spurs eye Savinho and Marmoush to fix struggling attack

Forward this to whoever spent the day in meetings — they missed a weird, wonderful news cycle

CHEATKOTT - Your Daily News

🪙 Crypto check
₿ BTC $77,761 📈 +1.9% (24h)
Ξ ETH $2,471 📈 +3.2% (24h)

😨/🤑 Fear & Greed: 73 — Greed

🏥 Musiala has now collapsed twice in four days

Jamal Musiala, a key player for Bayern Munich and Germany, lost consciousness on the pitch for the second time in four days on Tuesday — six minutes after coming on as a substitute in Bayern's 4-2 friendly win at Heidenheim. The same had happened on Saturday against RB Leipzig.

Sporting director Max Eberl confirmed Bayern knew about the situation beforehand: "We are aware of it. Jamal will speak out soon." Heat above 30°C was flagged after Saturday's incident — but Tuesday's repeat doesn't fit that explanation as neatly.

Musiala missed six months last season with an ankle fracture from the 2025 Club World Cup, then returned to start three of Germany's four games at the 2026 World Cup. Two collapses in four days point to something that needs a clearer answer, per BBC Sport — which Musiala is expected to provide shortly.

🎬 One word. One chill.

Villeneuve kept the Spacing Guild Navigators off-screen across both Dune films — deliberately, to preserve the sense that interstellar travel is something beyond comprehension. The new 30-second teaser just cracked that open.

Florence Pugh's Irulan asks Edric — Navigator, spice-tank resident, key conspirator against Emperor Paul in *Dune Messiah* — what lies ahead. His reply, in a gravelly rasp: "The end."

Dune: Part Three opens December 18, 2026, same day as *Avengers: Doomsday* — already dubbed "Dunesday". One line of dialogue, tickets on sale. Villeneuve knows exactly what he's doing, per IGN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9xhJrPXop4

🔐 A perfect 10 that nobody got to play

Microsoft has quietly patched a flaw in Entra ID — its cloud identity platform handling authentication for millions of enterprise users. The vulnerability, CVE-2026-69836, scored a 10.0 on the CVSS scale: the absolute ceiling. No privileges, no user interaction, exploitable over the network.

Classic deserialization: malformed data in, remote code execution out. Except Microsoft found and fixed it before the CVE even went public, according to Decrypt. No exploitation in the wild. Nothing for customers to do.

A perfect 10. Never cashed in. The most anticlimactic heist of the year.

📌 Daily Recap · Aug 24

🏥 Musiala collapsed twice on the pitch in four days
🎬 Dune finally shows us what a Navigator looks like
🔐 Microsoft quietly patched a perfect-10 severity flaw nobody exploited

Send this to whoever was too busy to doomscroll today — you're doing them a favour

CHEATKOTT - Your Daily News

🪙 Crypto check
₿ BTC $80,714 📈 +3.8% (24h)
Ξ ETH $2,507 📈 +1.5% (24h)

😨/🤑 Fear & Greed: 74 — Greed

📚 63% of Religious Books on Amazon Are Likely AI-Written

AI detection firm Originality.ai analyzed 2,034 books across 14 religious categories on Amazon and flagged 63% as likely AI-generated.

Witchcraft titles led at 78%, followed by Hinduism at 76% and Taoism at 74%. Mormonism, atheism, and Satanism ranked lowest at 42%, 40%, and 22%. The study also found 53% of fact-checkable claims in witchcraft books potentially false.

The report's author notes the model assigns probability, not certainty. Amazon did not respond to Decrypt's request for comment and relies on an honor system for authors to self-identify AI-written work.

⚽ Hull City just beat Manchester United 2-0 on their Premier League return

Nine years out of the top flight — their last game there was a 1-7 home loss to Tottenham in 2017. They scraped back through the Championship play-offs this summer, squeaking into sixth on goal difference on the final day. Every pundit had them finishing last.

First match back: two first-half goals from defenders Ajayi and Mendy, clean sheet, and their first league win over United since 1974. Rooney and Shearer both said Hull were the better side, per BBC Sport.

All week the manager Jakirovic was fielding mockery from pundits who'd written them off. His answer: "You're so convinced? Bet on it." Ajayi after the game: "Maybe people will stop sleeping on us." Thirty-seven games still to go.