Mythos & Mayhem 🤖🚫

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the tumultuous launch of Anthropic’s new model, Fable. Framed as a safer version of Mythos 5, exploits were discovered, prompting the US Government to ban foreign access and eventually leading to its removal days after its release. Wild times. We also have news on the world’s first trillionaire, a potential touchscreen MacBook, and the latest country to ban social media for kids. We’ll also bring you our Stat of the Week, App of the Week, and all the latest from 3Advance.

🎬 Our Top Take

🚨 🤖 Anthropic – When AI Gets Classified as a Weapon

Oh boy. There’s a lot to cover here in a complex but massively important story, so let’s just dive into the facts: On June 9, Anthropic formally announced Mythos 5, its powerful new AI model, but there was a twist. The company said Mythos 5 was too dangerous, as it could be exploited in areas like weapons development or cyberattacks, so it instead released Fable, essentially a version of Mythos 5 with safeguards. Within a couple of days, Amazon reported to the US Government that Fable could be jailbroken, i.e., those safeguards could be bypassed. The US Gov responded by instantly classifying Fable as a dangerous munition, banning it for foreigners – and by foreigners, we don’t just mean foreign governments; we also mean non-US citizens working here. That, of course, was largely unworkable, so Anthropic decided to remove the model altogether. It’s been a whirlwind week, one in which there's something akin to panic over AI sovereignty. Without hyperbole, it’s as if AI is suddenly looked upon like nuclear weapons. And the irony of it all is that Anthropic is probably right when it cites rival models like OpenAI’s GPT 5.5 as potentially (mis)usable in the same way. Over here at 3Advance, we had just one day to play with Fable, and we can attest to the power and speed that make this one special (not to mention the cost, but that’s a problem for another day). A lot of AI enthusiasts were lamenting the loss, but all in all, we’ll take it as a good sign that the powers that be take this so seriously. The genie is back in the bottle, for the time being. #WarningFable Read more here. 

📲 App of the Week: Zest

Restaurant and food recommendation apps are hardly new, but Zest takes a novel approach to helping you find a perfect spot. Zest, which has been backed by Alexis Ohanian (of Reddit and Serena Williams fame), is built on data, showing where and what people actually eat. The idea is that you link your credit card, it starts analyzing your spending and then builds a profile of what you like. It also pulls in data from over 80 million restaurant reviews. Finally, it starts creating a pseudo-social network, so you can see, for example, where your friends dined when they visited a city you are heading to next. We would say that this still feels a bit experimental, despite spending a long time in beta, but it could grow into something interesting as more and more data is pulled in. Find out more here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: $130B

📈📉 Data Centers – Protests Have Been Relatively Successful

Data centers. Most of us don’t want them in our proverbial backyards - if at all - and there is a lot of strong feeling out there, tackling both the environmental and ethical impact of the centers. Anyway, as it turns out, nationwide protests against building AI data centers in specific regions have had some success so far, with an estimated $130 billion in projects blocked already. Fortune also reports that construction “setbacks” in the first three months of 2026 exceeded all of last year’s thwarted projects. As the publication points out, the opposition is snowballing. #DataBlock Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

So you’ve reached the end of our newsletter. You hopefully enjoyed it then! We’ve been running What’s Appening for around four and a half years, and are considering its future. Should we keep going? Is it worth it? Is it time to wrap it up? We love seeing it come together, and it’s been a great way to keep in touch with all of you. We’d love to hear what you think, or if you’ve got any ideas to fund it moving forward. Sponsorship? New stewardship? Open to all your thoughts.

Of course, you could always support the newsletter by hiring us, or referring us! 💚