💬 Quoted: “With King Charles being such a big fan of Wallace and Gromit, we couldn’t think of a better way to draw his attention."

• Much like a visiting foreign dignitary, Animal Rising, a UK animal-rights protest group, is playing to the personal interests of King Charles III in an attempt to spur favorable political action – though their approach is decidedly less diplomatic. Yesterday, Animal Rising vandalized the first completed portrait of the UK king by sticking Wallace and Gromit-themed posters to its protective glass, in a demonstration aimed at drawing attention to what Animal Rising describes as "awful suffering” across farms endorsed by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). While Animal Rising is urging King Charles to suspend his royal patronage of the RSPCA, the charity group itself denies claims of impropriety, saying its efforts are “the best way to help farmed animals right now.”

📰 Stat of the Day: Stay vigilant out there, folks. In the US, the number of partisan-backed news outlets designed to appear as impartial news sources has officially surpassed the number of real, local daily newspapers, according to a new report from misinformation tracking company NewsGuard. The firm identified at least 1,265 websites that present themselves as neutral outlets, but publish content reflecting a partisan perspective or have undisclosed partisan funding/ownership (aka the opposite of The DONUT, where employee-backed, influence-free nonpartisan news is our bread and butter). There were 1,213 daily local newspapers in the US as of last year.

🤔 Did You Know? The world’s first submersible with a documented record of use in combat dates back to the American Revolutionary War. In 1775, American David Bushnell developed an underwater vessel as a means to attach explosive charges to British ships – though it failed to succeed across multiple attempts.

📰 Worth a Read: Abracadabra! How magic can help us understand animal minds → (Knowable Magazine)