(Platoon) The Chilean-German producer’s shapeshifting vocals stir Latin rhythms, ghetto house, trance and more into a playful party Over the past two decades, Chilean-German vocalist and producer Matías Aguayo’s mutable, instinctive singing has been an instantly identifiable ingredient of leftfield electronic music. On Battles’ 2011 track Ice Cream , he squealed and tripped through syllables again...
(Platoon) The Chilean-German producer’s shapeshifting vocals stir Latin rhythms, ghetto house, trance and more into a playful party Over the past two decades, Chilean-German vocalist and producer Matías Aguayo’s mutable, instinctive singing has been an instantly identifiable ingredient of leftfield electronic music. On Battles’ 2011 track Ice Cream , he squealed and tripped through syllables against a thunderous synth backing, while Japanese synth-pop group Crystal’s 2017 track Kimi Wa Monster saw Ayuayo singing a keening, childlike melody over instrumental. His own releases featured layered chants and scatter-gun vocal rhythms over pulsing Afro-Latin beats. While his last record, 2019’s Support Alien Invasion, marked his first foray into instrumental music, Anenoa heralds Aguayo’s welcome return to the mic across a selection of hard-hitting, dancefloor-focused arrangements. The fast-paced syncopated Latin rhythm of opener Sentimientos Encontraos sets the ebullient tone, with Aguayo’s nonchalant repetition of the title creating a hypnotic motif as bubbling and kinetic as the beat. Sprechgesang gives way to soulful falsetto on the ghetto house-influenced Asuka, Rock, Roll , while vocal processing transforms Aguayo’s party chants into a growling baritone on thumping trance number Avestruz en Veracruz. On the 80s-styled synth-pop of La Heredera, he croons delicately alongside featured Latin American singers Iarahei and Camille Mandoki. Continue reading...
Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami; All Flesh by Ananda Devi; The White Desert by Luis López Carrasco; The Home of the Drowned by Elin Anna Labba Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio (Picador, £16.99) Kawakami’s latest opens with a bang, as narrator Hana learns that her old friend Kimiko has been charged with abduction. This MacGuffin takes us to thei...
Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami; All Flesh by Ananda Devi; The White Desert by Luis López Carrasco; The Home of the Drowned by Elin Anna Labba Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio (Picador, £16.99) Kawakami’s latest opens with a bang, as narrator Hana learns that her old friend Kimiko has been charged with abduction. This MacGuffin takes us to their friendship in late-1990s Tokyo, when teen Hana and the older woman open a bar called Lemon: “Yellow attracts money.” But it’s a turbulent ride and soon Hana is in a world of organised crime. “The world is crazy. I feel like I’m living in a manga.” She’s not the only one, and you need an appetite for Kawakami’s style, which prefers to explore rather than explain – people come and go, buildings burn down, cancer is diagnosed, almost at random – but the relentless rush means there’s no time to get bored. At its best – as in a scene where Hana’s unreliable mother wants to borrow 2m yen for investment in lingerie that helps “your spine and organs move back to where they’re supposed to be” – this is a story both absurd and horrifying. All Flesh by Ananda Devi, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman (Pushkin, £12.99) “Forgive me for starting this story with bodily, unpalatable origins.” You may as well – it’s all like that. In an unnamed European country, a schoolgirl “born with no urge but to consume” is getting bigger and bigger. “My gut, my ass, my thighs – they were all set on reaching the farthest corners of the world.” She blames her gluttony on the need to silence the voice of her dead twin sister, who was “absorbed into my tissues” in the womb. She hates school, where other kids mock her, as though her own self-disgust weren’t enough. After a blackly comic scene where she gets stuck in her bedroom doorframe like “an uncooperative cork”, she falls in love with the lonely carpenter who arrives to widen the door – but there are more twists to come. This powerful story is deeply ph...
Pick of the week Dead Man’s Wire The spirit of the Al Pacino classic Dog Day Afternoon is alive and well in Gus Van Sant’s ripped-from-the-headlines drama. Both feature a desperate man driven to extremes, a frantic police operation to contain him and a 1970 media circus that creates an antihero. Bill Skarsgård is all gangly, edgy energy as Tony Kiritsis, a low-level Indianapolis land developer who...
Pick of the week Dead Man’s Wire The spirit of the Al Pacino classic Dog Day Afternoon is alive and well in Gus Van Sant’s ripped-from-the-headlines drama. Both feature a desperate man driven to extremes, a frantic police operation to contain him and a 1970 media circus that creates an antihero. Bill Skarsgård is all gangly, edgy energy as Tony Kiritsis, a low-level Indianapolis land developer who believes mortgage broker ML Hall (Al Pacino in a superbly unlikable cameo) cheated him on a deal. So he takes Hall’s son, Richard (Dacre Montgomery), hostage using the titular contraption connected to a shotgun. It’s surprisingly funny amid the sweaty tension, with Kiritsis’s delusion that he’ll get away with the crime almost endearing. Friday 5 June, 8am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere Propeller One-Way Night Coach View image in fullscreen Fly guys … Kelly Eviston-Quinnett and Clark Shotwell in Propeller One-Way Night Coach. Photograph: Apple TV John Travolta’s drama is the definition of a vanity project. He wrote and directed it from his own children’s novel, as well as narrating, and it features members of his family. But there’s something cosily nostalgic about his stylishly retro tale, set in the golden age of air travel. It’s 28 December 1962, and Jeff (Clark Shotwell) and his actor mother (Kelly Eviston-Quinnett) are flying TWA from New York to LA overnight. It’s an eye-opening experience for the eight-year-old on his first flight, with glamorous cabin crew, actual beds and “chicken cordon bleu”. Out now, Apple TV Ghost Trail View image in fullscreen By the book? … Adam Bessa in Ghost Trail. Photograph: Alamy In 2016, a group of exiled Syrians in Europe are tracking down war criminals from the Assad regime. Hamid (Adam Bessa) thinks he has found one in Strasbourg, posing as a university chemistry student. But as he surveils him, Hamid’s increasing certainty that this was the state official who tortured him in prison bumps up against a lack of definitive proof. In Jonathan...
Listen to Odd Lots on Apple Podcasts Listen to Odd Lots on Spotify Watch Odd Lots on YouTube Subscribe to the newsletter There's been a massive selloff in the bond market and rates are rising all around the world. Japan, Korea, the UK... You name it. Gita Gopinath, Harvard economics professor and the former first deputy managing director of the IMF, has long warned that bond markets are \
Listen to Odd Lots on Apple Podcasts Listen to Odd Lots on Spotify Watch Odd Lots on YouTube Subscribe to the newsletter There's been a massive selloff in the bond market and rates are rising all around the world. Japan, Korea, the UK... You name it. Gita Gopinath, Harvard economics professor and the former first deputy managing director of the IMF, has long warned that bond markets are \
Tesla Inc has just 42 vehicles operating as robotaxis in Texas almost a year after Elon Musk launched the service, a small fraction of the fleet commanded by rival Waymo. The official count was revealed for the first time in registration information Tesla submitted to the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles under new rules that went into effect Thursday. A DMV website shows that Alphabet Inc’s Waym...
Tesla Inc has just 42 vehicles operating as robotaxis in Texas almost a year after Elon Musk launched the service, a small fraction of the fleet commanded by rival Waymo. The official count was revealed for the first time in registration information Tesla submitted to the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles under new rules that went into effect Thursday. A DMV website shows that Alphabet Inc’s Waymo has registered 577 automated vehicles in the state, more than 13 times Tesla’s total. The tally represents the most concrete assessment yet of the scale of Tesla’s Texas robotaxi network that began operating in Austin last June. Autonomous taxis are central to Musk’s effort to transform Tesla from a dominant maker of electric vehicles into a leader in artificial intelligence and robotics. Tesla’s robotaxi service recently expanded to Dallas and Houston. Still, it’s a modest start for an operation that Musk last fall said would include 500 robotaxis in Austin alone by the end of 2025, before dialling back those expectations. The numbers were submitted to Texas’s motor vehicle department under new state rules governing commercial operators of automated vehicles. The companies must provide the department with information including guidance for first responders and disclose how many vehicles they operate. Texas previously had limited oversight of autonomous vehicle operators, only requiring that their vehicles be equipped with cameras, be insured and able to follow traffic laws. Tesla also operates a rideshare service in the San Francisco Bay Area, although it lacks approvals needed to operate autonomous rides. The company said in April it is preparing to expand its service to five more cities, though Musk has said the network is unlikely to generate meaningful revenue for Tesla this year. In Texas, Waymo’s fleet operates in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. – Bloomberg
Nutthaseth Vanchaichana/iStock via Getty Images There is a new US private auto market share leader on a 12-month basis for the first time since World War II, S&P Global Market Intelligence estimates. The take Private direct premiums written for the trailing 12-month period ended March 31 by the US subsidiaries of The Progressive Corp. ( PGR ) surpassed those generated by the group led by State Far...
Nutthaseth Vanchaichana/iStock via Getty Images There is a new US private auto market share leader on a 12-month basis for the first time since World War II, S&P Global Market Intelligence estimates. The take Private direct premiums written for the trailing 12-month period ended March 31 by the US subsidiaries of The Progressive Corp. ( PGR ) surpassed those generated by the group led by State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. by more than $1.57 billion, based on our analysis of disclosures in first-quarter 2026 statutory financial statements and select, limited proprietary estimates. This marks the first time that Progressive's market share over a 12-month span has surpassed that of State Farm, which had ranked as the No. 1 US private auto insurer since 1942 — five years before Progressive's founding. We previously estimated that Progressive outpaced State Farm in the third quarter of 2025, but seasonality in individual private auto books of business often leads to considerable variability in quarterly volumes. Disparate growth rates for the two insurers made it seemingly inevitable that Progressive would surpass State Farm on a full-year basis in 2026 after the latter entity held onto the No. 1 spot in 2025 by only a razor-thin margin. Progressive has continued to expand its private auto writings at much faster rates than most of its peers and the US property and casualty industry as a whole in recent years, and its first-quarter results imply that trend has persisted into 2026. Methodology and estimates S&P Global Market Intelligence plans to post first-quarter statutory results on or about May 20, with trailing 12-month data scheduled for posting the following day. When the data becomes available, it will show State Farm continuing to maintain a slight lead over Progressive on a trailing 12-month basis. However, Progressive's publicly available quarterly results are artificially depressed by the absence of data for two New Jersey-domiciled subsidiaries that g...
Whirlpool Company Overview Founded in 1955, Whirlpool Corporation (WHR) is one of the largest manufacturers of home appliances in the world. The company manufactures products in 14 countries and markets them in nearly every country worldwide. Notably, the Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) company’s product portfolio can be broadly classified into laundry appliances, refrigerators and freezers, cooking a...
Whirlpool Company Overview Founded in 1955, Whirlpool Corporation (WHR) is one of the largest manufacturers of home appliances in the world. The company manufactures products in 14 countries and markets them in nearly every country worldwide. Notably, the Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) company’s product portfolio can be broadly classified into laundry appliances, refrigerators and freezers, cooking appliances, and other small household appliances such as dishwashers and mixers. It also produces hermetic compressors for refrigeration systems. WHR markets brands including Whirlpool, KitchenAid, Maytag, Consul, Brastemp, Amana, Bauknecht, JennAir, Indesit, and other major brand names. The company has the industry’s best brand portfolio, led by Whirlpool and KitchenAid. Of its brand portfolio, six brands generate more than $1 billion in revenue. Whirlpool’s Headwinds Whirpool faces several cyclical headwinds, including a weak housing market, compressing profit margins, and recent structural capital distress. Because big-ticket home appliances are closely tied to residential real estate transactions, a sluggish housing market and high interest rates led to a sharp drop in discretionary demand for new appliance sets. While baseline replacement demand keeps the company afloat, the high-margin "new build" and home-remodeling segments have dried up, leading to multi-quarter revenue declines and a flurry of downward earnings-per-share (EPS) revisions by Wall Street analysts. Whirlpool’s margins in the first quarter of 2026 were also pressured by the ongoing impact of U.S. tariffs and a delayed industry pricing response, particularly in North America. This has been weighing on profitability and limited the ability to fully offset cost inflation through pricing. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research WHR has Stiff Competition Whirlpool operates in a highly competitive home appliance industry with rivals, including Bosch, Electrolux, Haier, Kenmore, LG, Mabe, Midea, Panasonic, and...
Following its February 2025 spin-off from Western Digital, Sandisk (SNDK) has emerged as a pure-play leader in the NAND flash memory and SSD (solid state drive) storage markets. The stock has soared from $50 in August to $395 on Monday and is currently the top performer in the S&P 500 in the last year, benefiting from the "AI Data Cycle" shift from training to inference. With the rollout of its hi...
Following its February 2025 spin-off from Western Digital, Sandisk (SNDK) has emerged as a pure-play leader in the NAND flash memory and SSD (solid state drive) storage markets. The stock has soared from $50 in August to $395 on Monday and is currently the top performer in the S&P 500 in the last year, benefiting from the "AI Data Cycle" shift from training to inference. With the rollout of its high-density BiCS8 technology and a strategic rebranding of its client portfolio, SNDK is capturing significant value in the enterprise and AI-edge segments. Primary Business Segments & Products Sandisk has realigned its operations into three core market-facing segments: Datacenter (28% of Revenue): This is the high-growth engine. Focused on hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, etc), SNDK provides high-capacity, power-efficient SSDs. Key products include the Stargate controller-based drives and 256TB UltraQLC SSDs designed for AI inference. Edge (61% of Revenue): Formerly the "Client" segment, this serves the PC and smartphone markets. At CES 2026, SNDK announced the retirement of the legacy WD Black/Blue labels in favor of the Sandisk Optimus™ brand. The Optimus GX Pro is now the flagship for AI PCs and professional workstations requiring high local processing speeds. Consumer (11% of Revenue): A consistent cash cow comprising retail memory cards and portable SSDs. SNDK maintains dominance here through partnerships, recently eclipsing 900,000 units of its co-branded Nintendo Switch 2 microSD Express cards. September Quarter Blowout and Roaring Guidance Here's what my colleague Jeremy Mullin wrote on December 1st after Sandisk's Q1 FY'26 report... Sandisk delivered a standout first quarter, easily topping expectations with EPS with a 37% EPS beat. Revenue came in at $2.38 billion versus $2.12 billion expected and profitability improved meaningfully as gross margin climbed to 29.8%, up 3.6 points both sequentially and year-over-year. Guidance for the second quarter was even strong...
Move a win for US chip titan as it looks to secure customers for foundry services Mediatek says it is now "one of the few" chip designers able to support customers using advanced packaging technologies from both Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Intel. (Source photos by Cheng Ting-Fang and Reuters)
Move a win for US chip titan as it looks to secure customers for foundry services Mediatek says it is now "one of the few" chip designers able to support customers using advanced packaging technologies from both Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Intel. (Source photos by Cheng Ting-Fang and Reuters)
American Airlines Group Today AAL American Airlines Group $14.65 -0.27 (-1.81%) 52-Week Range $10.09 ▼ $16.50 P/E Ratio 47.26 Price Target $14.80 Add to Watchlist American Airlines Group NASDAQ: AAL is aggressively positioning its fleet to capture the high-margin corporate travel segment. Operating in a sector squeezed by rising fuel costs and shifting consumer demand, American Airlines Group is l...
American Airlines Group Today AAL American Airlines Group $14.65 -0.27 (-1.81%) 52-Week Range $10.09 ▼ $16.50 P/E Ratio 47.26 Price Target $14.80 Add to Watchlist American Airlines Group NASDAQ: AAL is aggressively positioning its fleet to capture the high-margin corporate travel segment. Operating in a sector squeezed by rising fuel costs and shifting consumer demand, American Airlines Group is leveraging a 500-jet Starlink integration to secure a distinct hardware advantage over competitors. Get AAL alerts: Sign Up This technological moat faces immediate institutional skepticism as a severe downward guidance revision, a massive $1.14 billion in new secured debt, and the abrupt exit of the Chief Commercial Officer expose recent fundamental hurdles. Management is actively deploying capital to modernize the in-flight experience, setting the stage for a sustainable revenue recovery and mitigating these near-term risks. Orbiting the Competition With SpaceX Commercial aviation runs on tight margins, making the premium corporate traveler an essential demographic for long-term profitability. To court this critical demographic, American Airlines announced a strategic partnership with SpaceX to install Starlink Wi-Fi across more than 500 narrowbody Airbus aircraft. The massive retrofit targets existing A319, A320, and A321 airframes, as well as incoming A321XLR and A321neo deliveries. Physical deployment begins in Q1 2027. The network upgrade relies on thousands of low Earth orbit satellites to deliver gate-to-gate multigigabit connectivity. Low Earth orbit networks operate significantly closer to the Earth than legacy geostationary satellites, drastically reducing latency and signal degradation. For the enterprise traveler, this technological leap translates to seamless video conferencing, cloud collaboration, and high-bandwidth streaming at 30,000 feet. Securing this hardware capability by early 2027 will give American Airlines a critical time-to-market advantage. Competi...
Around 86 per cent of children seeking places in Hong Kong’s public primary schools have secured one of their top three choices through the central allocation system, a record high and up from about 79 per cent last year, as applicant numbers fell 16 per cent to 16,345, the steepest decline on record. But a representative from a primary school council said the competition for discretionary places ...
Around 86 per cent of children seeking places in Hong Kong’s public primary schools have secured one of their top three choices through the central allocation system, a record high and up from about 79 per cent last year, as applicant numbers fell 16 per cent to 16,345, the steepest decline on record. But a representative from a primary school council said the competition for discretionary places – commonly known as “door-knocking” – is unlikely to ease, as some parents whose children were allocated their second choice might still try to secure a place at their preferred school. Most applicants this year were born in 2020, amid the fallout of the anti-government protests of 2019 and the Covid-19 pandemic. The birth rate that year fell by nearly 20 per cent to about 43,000. Advertisement The Education Bureau said on Friday that 14,093 children, or 86.2 per cent, were allocated a place in one of their top three choices under the central allocation stage. Pupils submitted their preferences in January. “Taking into account discretionary places and the number of children allocated to schools of their first three choices in the central allocation, the overall satisfaction rate was 93.6 per cent,” a bureau spokesman said, with the rate being the highest since 1997. Advertisement In Hong Kong, Primary One places at public schools are allocated using a two-stage process.
TradingKey - On May 28, Eastern Time, AI company Anthropic announced the completion of a $65 billion Series H funding round, with a post-money valuation reaching $965 billion, surpassing the $852 billion valuation of its competitor OpenAI to become the world's most valuable private AI company. Notably, the world's three largest memory chip manufacturers—Micron Technology ( MU ), Samsung Electronic...
TradingKey - On May 28, Eastern Time, AI company Anthropic announced the completion of a $65 billion Series H funding round, with a post-money valuation reaching $965 billion, surpassing the $852 billion valuation of its competitor OpenAI to become the world's most valuable private AI company. Notably, the world's three largest memory chip manufacturers—Micron Technology ( MU ), Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix, participated as "strategic infrastructure partners" for the first time simultaneously. The specific investment amounts from the three companies were not disclosed. In a statement, Anthropic mentioned that the three partners "play a key role in the global supply of memory, storage, and logic chips." It is worth noting that the manufacturing of "logic chips" relies on foundry processes. Among the three partners, only Samsung Electronics possesses an independent foundry division, while Micron and SK Hynix do not have this business. Consequently, industry observers generally believe that the scope of collaboration between Anthropic and Samsung may extend beyond memory procurement into the foundry manufacturing sector. Anthropic has not yet provided further clarification on this matter. If Samsung secures the AI chip foundry orders from Anthropic, it will introduce another heavyweight AI client to its foundry business, helping the division return to profitability. Furthermore, it is poised to use breakthroughs in 2nm process yields as an opportunity to capture market share as TSMC's capacity becomes saturated. Samsung has made several strides in the foundry sector in recent years: securing orders for Tesla's ( TSLA) AI5/AI6 chips; NVIDIA's ( NVDA) Groq 3 LPU inference chips were previously produced using Samsung's 4nm process; additionally, it is expected to supply Apple's ( AAPL) future iPhone models with image sensors. For SK Hynix and Micron, their participation in Anthropic is viewed by the market as a defensive move. Industry observers point out that the in...