Happy Monday, !

Joan “The Shakespeare of N2K Haikus” Benson won last week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ with this beauty:

I sent her a congratulatory note and she said, “I can’t believe it either! I’m thrilled!”

Although at this point, since she’s won so many, I feel like we need to start teeing up Oscar Acceptance-style remarks for Joan. Thank your first grade teachers. You know? Still, stay classy, Joan Benson. God knows somebody needs to around here.

It was a close-run thing, though, this week, Joan:

⬜️⬜️ Woke up to fury, Why is U.S.A. Involved, Not friendly fire ~Lourdes Banks (120)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Death and destruction! Sayeth Hegseth from safety, while Iran suffers. ~Joan Benson (183)
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨 Please no nukes. No nukes. For the love of all that’s good, Please no nukes. My god. ~Jon Daigle (177)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ US bombs Iran. I can’t follow the details. Makes me too nervous. ~Margaret Lea (51)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Which way should I go? I Ran as fast as I could! Why not ask Congress? ~Harriet Feldman (31)
562 Votes via @beehiiv polls

So don’t give up hope, competitors. You can do it! Get five of your friends to vote for you next time, Jon, and you’ll be over the line! Let’s knock Joan off her poetic perch, eh? Welcome to MMA, N2K-style! 

This week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ is about how cows literally outperformed the S&P500 over the last five years:

Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

And now for some news you really N2K…

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

• The stock market lost $800B Friday — even before o …

• Mark Zuckerberg bought a Miami mansion for $170M

• When your Bitcoin mine becomes the hot date every …

• Your next coworker won’t need coffee breaks. (Also …

• The restaurant where your bill is whatever you wan …

• Poll of the day: Pay what you will!

• Bonus Poll of the day: #MeToo, U2

What’s the stock market up to, eh?*

$SPX ( ▼ 0.44% ) $DJI ( ▼ 0.71% ) $NDX ( ▼ 0.22% )  

*Basically, this: 🔥

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$META ( ▼ 1.62% )  $CLSK ( ▼ 0.05% )  $NOW ( ▼ 1.55% )  $CVS ( ▼ 0.91% )  

The stock market lost $800B Friday — even before oil hit $110 a barrel

Investors (and if you’ve got a 401(k), like I do, then you’re an investor, whether you like it or not) should prepare for a, let’s say, turbulent ride as markets open this morning. The escalating “conflict” in the Middle East has sent shockwaves through global markets, with oil prices smashing through $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022.

S&P 500 futures plunged 1.6% in early Asian trading, with Nasdaq 100 futures following suit. The catalyst? A perfect storm of geopolitical chaos that shows no signs of abating.

Brent crude rocketed 20% to $111.04 a barrel as Iran's new supreme leader, Mojtaba “Nepo-tollah” Khamenei, took power following his father's death in U.S.-Israeli airstrikes. The 56-year-old cleric was praised by Iran's parliament speaker as someone who would "guide the ship of the revolution" with strength. Also, he did not add, the new leader’s last name would be easy to remember.

President Trump has already rejected Iran's leadership transition, claiming Khamenei would not be acceptable to the U.S. and saying he wants to "be involved" in the choice. When asked whether ground forces might be deployed to seize Iran's enriched uranium, Trump was characteristically blunt: "Everything is on the table. Everything."

Which, I think, means nukes?

The region is ablaze. It’s raining oil from the sky in Tehran:

Saudi Arabia intercepted drones targeting oilfields. The UAE has recorded over 1,400 Iranian drone attacks. A U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship, killing 104 people. Seven American service members have now died in what the Pentagon is calling "Operation Epic Fury."

Perhaps most [insert concerned adjective here] was Trump's response when asked about surging gas prices devastating American consumers. His assessment? It's "fine," calling it merely "a little glitch."

Meanwhile, analysts at Pantheon “We Understate Things” Macroeconomics warn of "downside risks" from "the energy shock triggered by the war in Iran."

Ya think?

This all followed Friday’s news that the U.S. lost 92,000 jobs in February, having expected to gain 5,000. Oh, and U.S. retail sales also lost ground in February.

If only there was some good news to cheer us all up a bit. Wait…

Mark Zuckerberg bought a Miami mansion for $170M

In these trying times as Americans struggle with downside risks such as gas prices, grocery bills, and housing costs, it's heartwarming to know that Meta $META ( ▼ 1.62% ) CEO Mark Zuckerberg has found a modest 30,000-square-foot cottage to call home. For a mere $170 million, or about 2,000 times the U.S. median annual income, the Meta CEO snagged a limestone palace on Miami's Indian Creek island, complete with a 1,500-gallon aquarium (or about 150 times the size of the average U.S. aquarium), hair salon, massage room, and a library with a secret passageway. What's a billionaire's mansion without a touch of Scooby-Doo mystery?

Vladimir “Killjoy“ Lenin once said that "the Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." But did he have a swimming pool overlooking Biscayne Bay? No, he didn’t.

Zuckerberg reportedly fled California to escape a proposed 5% billionaire tax which will never actually make it into law because the tech lobby owns the California legislature, but Governor Gavin Newsom has got to run for president based on something. That’s the gist of analysts’ remarks on that situation.

Zuckerberg’s primary California residence is a massive, self-contained compound in the Crescent Park neighborhood of Palo Alto. Over 14 years, he has spent over $110 million to acquire at least 11 surrounding homes, creating a private estate that features gardens, a pickleball court, a swimming pool with a hydrofloor, and extensively renovated living spaces.

The new place in Miami has nine bedrooms, a dock, and celebrity neighbors like Tom “Jeff Bezos” Brady and Carl “Tom Brady” Icahn. Zuck also owns a house in San Francisco’s Mission District, and a place in Hawaii that includes a 5,000-square-foot underground shelter.

Karl “Kill Lenin“ Marx once wrote that "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce." No idea why that comes to mind this morning, but there it is.

Quote of the Day

When your Bitcoin mine becomes the hot date every AI data center wants

In the cutthroat world of digital energy consumption, CleanSpark $CLSK ( ▼ 0.05% ) CEO Matt “Jed Clampett” Schultz has discovered something valuable: his company is sitting on what's the most coveted real estate in tech.

CleanSpark is a leading U.S. Bitcoin mining company that designs, owns, and operates high-efficiency data centers, increasingly pivoting toward AI and high-performance computing infrastructure.

"Owning land and power puts you in a real strong position in this market," Schultz told us last week. CleanSpark currently has 1.8 gigawatts under contract, enough to supply roughly 1.2 to 1.5 million average American homes. It is a massive amount of energy, roughly equivalent to the continuous output of two large nuclear power plants.

As a result, apparently every hyperscaling AI firm in America is sliding into Schultz’s DMs. The inbound demand? "Incredible," according to Schultz.

The company's secret weapon? Poison darts. Flexibility. Bitcoin mining can turn off when the grid gets cranky — think of it as the polite houseguest who leaves when you're tired. AI data centers, meanwhile, like to party all night. By pairing the two uses for data centers, CleanSpark has cracked a code that Duke University researchers say could unlock 100 extra gigawatts of grid capacity nationwide. That’s nearly enough for a Flux Capacitor!

"We were kind of late to the party in Bitcoin mining," Schultz admitted. "We mined our first one in December 2020." Now they're America's biggest Bitcoin miner with 13,500 coins — all homegrown, none purchased, and worth approaching a billion dollars. Last year they pulled in $800 million in revenue at a 54% gross margin.

But here's where the economics get interesting: A 250-megawatt Bitcoin mining facility costs about $250 million to build. That same capacity for AI? A cool $2.5 billion. Having a strong balance sheet from profitable Bitcoin operations makes CleanSpark "a much better credit bet" for those massive buildouts, Schultz explained.

The company has strategically planted flags in Texas, securing sites between Houston and Austin that are already through ERCOT's [ahem] ”large load study process” — with energization schedules beginning as early as 2027. As for competitors pivoting frantically to AI? Schultz delivered a subtle burn: "A lot of the less efficient Bitcoin miners were the first to say, 'Hey, we're an AI factory now.'"

Your next coworker won’t need coffee breaks. (Also: You’re fired.)

Forget chatbots that fumble your IT tickets. ServiceNow is rolling out something far more ambitious: AI agents that essentially function as virtual employees — complete with job scopes, responsibilities, and governance frameworks¹ .

"They can basically act as a virtual employee that does the work end to end completely autonomously," explained Bhavin Shah, SVP at ServiceNow $NOW ( ▼ 1.55% ) and founder of MoveWorks, speaking from the NYSE trading floor.

The company breaks down its AI workforce into three tiers. First, single-task agents that navigate systems and handle basics like reading, writing daily newsletters for Cheddar, and summarizing. Next, agentic workflows combining deterministic and probabilistic processes for robust business operations. And now? Role-based assistants with defined skills and responsibilities that can tackle entire jobs from let’s say…soup to…let’s say…nuts.

CVS $CVS ( ▼ 0.91% ) is already putting this to work — with robot employees troubleshooting IT issues, updating schedules, managing expense reports, even rearranging store planograms.

But Shah wants people to understand what's flying under the radar: "A lot of the core workflows that your company runs on... can now actually be adjudicated by AI systems in a way that makes them more robust, more capable of handling edge cases,” he said.

His advice? "Look to see where you have friction." Because there's probably an AI agent for that.

Song of the Day: Jai’Len Josey, ’Housewife’

Jai’Len Josey’s "Housewife" is a masterclass in modern soul, trading tired clichés for a cinematic "reclamation of domestication." Built on a glossy, slow-burn production of warm keys and rhythmic handclaps, the track showcases Josey’s breathtaking range—moving effortlessly from intimate whispers to powerhouse, Broadway-caliber belts. Rather than a song about submission, it’s a soulful reality check where choice is the ultimate power move. Or it’s a song about wanting to become a housewife. You choose. Here there’s no downside risk!

Free yourself from advertising forever!

The restaurant where your bill is whatever you want it to be

When federal immigration raids swept through the Powderhorn Park neighborhood in Minneapolis earlier this year, Modern Times café owner Dylan “Altruisticson” Alverson made a gut decision: erase every price from the menu. His restaurant would operate free until ICE left Minnesota.

"It was a very passionate decision," Alverson told the Minnesota Star Tribune. "I wasn't thinking about the legality. But I knew enough about business that we'd figure it out."

What began as protest is now becoming permanent, just like Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s reign at the head of the department that controls ICE.

Alverson is now converting the 15-year-old cafe into a nonprofit, calling it the “Post Modern Times,” and keeping the pay-what-you-can model indefinitely.

The results have been remarkable. The day after announcing free meals, lines formed out the door. "Someone would get three things and ask for it free, and the next person would be like, 'Here's $100,'" recalled manager Darla “22% tips are customary” Evanosky. February donations actually exceeded last year's sales.

Cards arrive daily from across the country. Voicemails come from as far as Greece.

Greece! 🇬🇷

"No one knows what to do when they go into a business where you're saying money doesn't exist here," Alverson admitted. "It's radical."

And apparently it’s also working. Best of luck to them. I would also like to tuck into some of their tasty looking donuts:

Should you check your 401(k) today?

👎️ 

No. Also: Leave it where it is. Don’t move the money. #NotFinancialAdvice

Poll of the day: Pay what you will!

Bonus Poll of the day: #MeToo, U2

We asked: “Can you ever forgive Apple or U2 for forcing you to download "Songs of Innocence" in 2014?”

You answered:

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 No. (184)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ I've been working on it, praying, and really trying my best. But, no. (102)
286 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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1  See above about how the U.S. lost 92,000 jobs in February, having expected to gain 5,000.