2026 Starts off With a Bang of Memes
The start of 2026 is an eventful one. It's too much to explain in a long-ass article, so I decided to use memes.
Sup! 👋
New Year, New Me.
You’ve definitely heard or said this at least once in your life.
2026 seems to be the embodiment of this saying, and there is so much that happened in the last 10 days on the Internet alone.
I didn’t see a filter or what to describe everything, so I went for the only logical option: Memes!
With that in mind, grab a coffee or tea, kick back, and enjoy the start to 2026 explained through memes or funny tweets.
PS: With all this New Year’s talk, I forgot to wish you a great start to 2026! I hope you were able to enjoy the holidays with your family and friends.
PPS: If you enjoy this newsletter and believe your friends or family would too, a recommendation would be greatly appreciated!
This has been the top story of the new year, with the capture and extraction of former dictator, I mean president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.
Source: X
The Trump Administration decided to drop some special forces, or Marines, I don’t know how to call them in detail, and extract the former head of a very rich oil nation.
This move sparked countless reactions from diplomats, including Ursula von der Leyen. She said the EU is “monitoring the situation.”
As you can imagine, the Internet used these statements to make some killer memes. IMO, the following ones are the best ones to share:
Source: X
There had to be an EU joke in there as well. I mean, how couldn’t you not have made that after the OG of the saying came about…
Source: X
And it seems like the extraction is also following a certain “way of life”…
Source: X
But obviously, the U.S. didn’t just do this to remove a dictator (which has been celebrated immensely on the streets of Venezuela, by the way).
It actually did this to get access to loads of oil and power. The good old-fashioned CIA powerplay, if I may say so…
Trump didn’t stop there, though. After the extraction, he went a step further and gave Blackstone a giant middle finger.
In a rant on Truth Social, he effectively took power away from one of the most influential PE houses.
He said that the current administration is restricting the ability of private equity giants such as Blackstone (OK, he didn’t mention them by name in the release, but everyone knew) to buy up family homes.
Source: X
The Internet was also peaking with this situation and called out Trump.
Blackstone CEO and Chairman Steve Schwarzman must have been a little sad boy like Kendall Roy after spending so much money on the Trump campaign and getting this in return.
Source: X
All of this news happened within 72 hours. At one point, the entire Internet felt overwhelmed, and the number of situations to monitor became simply too many…
Luckily, the first week of the year is over. Let’s hope for some quieter ones in the coming days.
BAAAANG! Wrong thought!
The second week of the year was just as intense…
So far, the year has been pretty flat for assets, Bitcoin, and crypto alike.
But all of this changed on 12 January when Jerome Powell released the following video:
Source: X
In it, he mentions how he’s basically fighting back against the Trump Administration. They are threatening to investigate the Fed for Powell’s false statements last June.
While I’m a big critic of central banks and think they’re their own cartel, abusing a justice department to go after them is next level.
The markets reacted wildly to this, with Bitcoin soaring 5% since the video and the S&P 500 hitting a new all-time high along with gold and silver.
Source: X
But that’s not what we will be talking about; instead, we focus on the memes again.
And boy oh boy, there were many to choose from. I think the following describes the biggest news of the week best:
Source: X
At one point, I had to write this article and finish it. It felt like I could have included many more and extended each week.
For real, now.
Let’s see what 2026 has left in store for us.
So far, we’re off with a bang!
Next to the entire Venezuela and Blackstone story, there is also a lot more happening.
The following pieces or links are Tabs Worth Opening.
It’s the consumer watchdog against Google (again): It seems like Google’s new AI shopping tool is under scrutiny from a consumer watchdog. Both sides argue, and no one wants to admit blame…
LEGO is stepping up in the Pokémon department: LEGO is a passion of mine. There is something to sitting at your kitchen table and building something. Seems like I need to put down some money again for a few sets.
Claude wants to automate your entire workflow: Another month and another announcement by Claude and Anthropic. This time, they want to use the Claude Code framework and offer a fully automated AI suite.
This documentary about the Murdoch family: The Murdoch family is a fascinating, IRL example of power and corruption. This documentary shows its rise to success and why Succession is such a great TV show about the family.
Tim Higgins new book “iWar”: Another great book to read. It’s especially intriguing if you want to find out about Apple’s monopoly and how Epic Games, Spotify, and Google fight against it.
And that’s a wrap for the second full issue of Internet Native Capital.
It’s been a crazy start to the year, and I’ve seen that this small publication is already gaining some traction on Substack.
Thanks to all the new subscribers and to all existing ones. It’s always a pleasure to write and recap these events for you, and I already look forward to the next meme/news dump.
See ya!