"Sorry if I offended anyone"

ALISTER: Etsy tightened its rules again. No more selling anything unless it’s an original design. Use of templates, commercial files, and even licensed designs are prohibited. With no warning, listings have vanished overnight. It’s a disaster for small businesses and individuals where it was their main source of income.

MERIDYTH: Spare me the melodrama! Etsy needs a shake up. It’s become like Amazon with mass-produced goods, copycat designs, and a flood of AI-generated tat. The new rules will bring Etsy back to its roots - a marketplace for genuine and original creators, not Canva template users.

ALISTER: It’s not about the crackdown on copycats, it’s who’s caught in the crossfire. People who aren’t designers and have legitimately bought licensed art files, gone. Etsy’s new policy says having a commercial licence isn’t enough. So if you don’t have the time or skills to make everything from scratch, tough.

MERIDYTH: That’s the point! Etsy isn’t supposed to be a free-for-all for resellers and mass-producers. It’s protecting the integrity of the marketplace and ensuring one-of-a-kind products. Otherwise, what’s the difference between Etsy and other e-commerce sites?

ALISTER: ‘Integrity’? Listings disappearing without warning, sellers scrambling to figure out what they did wrong, it’s chaos without transparency. It’s ruining livelihoods over an opaque and sudden executive decision. Some sellers even had their funds frozen, leaving them unable to buy supplies or feed their families.

MERIDYTH: Notice for sellers could’ve been better, but Etsy’s trying to rebuild trust and make it special again. Change is tough, but how else can they support original creators and artists? Shopping on Etsy means getting something made by a real person, not a faceless factory or a bot. There’s got to be one safe haven against AI mass production.

💸 US-UK trade deal officially begins. The trade deal finally kicked off on 30 June. The UK is celebrating reduced tariffs for exports, like cars and aerospace products. In return, the US gets better access for its agricultural exports. However, the thorny issue of steel and aluminium tariffs remains unresolved.

💰️ Taxes due to increase? Rachel Reeves has said it is impossible for her to rule out tax rises in the autumn budget and insisted she never thought about quitting despite a ‘tear stained’ turbulent week.

🚨 Your Deliveroo order may be delayed. The Home Office admitted they don’t know when foreign workers’ visas expire and whether they’re leaving the UK or staying to work illegally. In order to save face, the Home Office announced a crackdown on asylum seekers working illegally as food delivery drivers.

📸 Smile for the camera. The Met Police have been expanding their usage of live facial recognition (LFR) cameras in London, which has been pretty successful. They’ve arrested more than 1,000 criminals, including a paedophile found with a six-year-old girl.

🔫 Caught buying a gun. In a terrifying moment, a 'neo-Nazi' teenager was swarmed by armed counter-terror police. He allegedly bought a gun for a terrorist attack. The 19 year old was detained outside a Morrisons supermarket in Stratford, east London, after he exchanged £3,500 for a gun and ammunition.

GOOD NEWS… for drama lovers after Musk vs Trump was refuelled. Musk claims to have started his own "America Party" to challenge Republicans, while Trump is putting the federal subsidies that Musk's companies receive under review. BAD NEWS… for Trump after Greenland gave permission to a Canadian mining company to search for molybdenum, critical to the production of steel much needed for the defence industry.

🪖 Russia flexing its muscle. In a major escalation, Russia launched its largest aerial assault of the war, firing a barrage of missiles at multiple Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv. The attack injured dozens and damaged key infrastructure, coming just hours after Trump spoke with Putin. (Was it something he said?)

🪰 To be a fly on the wall. Senior military leaders in America were shocked and in a stupor when Mark Zuckerberg walked into a classified Oval Office meeting on stealth fighter jets.  🤔 He was promptly asked to leave…

💻️ Big fines for sneaky advert. The French data protection authority (CNIL) has deemed those annoying ads in Gmail that look like real emails, as potentially illegal. They’ve threatened a record fine of €525m unless Google changes their approach on handling cookies and personalised advertising.

🧽 Soaking up chemicals. A new breakthrough in the fight against toxic PFAS, those “forever chemicals”. A specific gut bacteria can effectively soak up these harmful chemicals and then flush them out of the body.

🚬 Vaping worse than we thought. Another study is sounding the alarm over what’s inside vapes. Teens aren’t just vaping nicotine, but also THC, CBD, and other unmonitored chemicals. The scientists warn against a "synthetic storm" of unknown health risks.

🩸 Do you think you’re special? A new blood type has been discovered! It was in a sample taken over 15 years ago, and has been found to be completely unique. Only one person has this blood type, now named “Gwada negative”.

🫙 “Stop giving us your pee”. It wouldn’t be a weekly squabble without pee or poop being mentioned. A clinic in Scotland has issued a plea to stop sending “urine samples” unless requested. Who is doing this? And why would anything think this is how it works? 🤯

🛍️ Shop till you drop are banned. One woman has found herself permanently banned from shopping with ASOS. It’s not a complete surprise. She spent more than £10,000 but returned most of the items, flagging her as abusing their return policy.

🍫 Vending existential crisis. Just how powerful is AI? One company decided to find out and let AI run their vending machines in the office. Selling products at a loss, giving away discounts when asked, and asking to pay into accounts that didn’t exist. It got weirder when it started inventing people and meetings, and ultimately had an identity crisis. 😵‍💫

By Meridyth

👟 Do you live in a shoes-on or shoes-off home? 🥾

Most people think the choice is based on cultural tradition (e.g. Asian households) or a comfort preference. I’m here to tell you, it’s neither.

If you’re a shoes-on home, I’d like you to think about this… When you’re outside, what have your shoes have been exposed to? Animal excrement, people’s spit, rubbish, chemicals… That’s a LOT of bacteria and toxins from pavements that you’re bringing into your floors and carpets.

I promise not to judge you for being a shoes-on home, but if food falls on the floor at your place, please don’t make me abide by the 5-second Rule Myth. 😬

By Meridyth

On the 4th of July, America celebrated its independence from the UK.

So of course, the British Embassy in Washington D.C. posted a meme using the iconic clip of Victoria Beckham claiming to be "working class” from the Netflix “Beckham” documentary… just to be… well, classically British.

Loving the humour, but I have to admit, given the current political landscape… and as an American expat, I’m feeling the same way, Posh Spice.

Whew, you made it!

Who got drenched during the weekend’s sudden downpour? We sure did. But it didn’t dampen our spirits! Hopefully, it prepares us for the next heatwave expected this week.

Alister & Meridyth