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• Australia and Singapore vote.
• Chatbots have salacious quotes.
• Trump has little reason to gloat.
• Starbucks struggles to stay afloat.

This morning I came across a delicious cookie variety I’d never heard of at my local coffee shop: an Anzac biscuit. I asked the barista where the name came from, and she vaguely told me that it had “something to do with war.” According to Wikipedia, women made Anzac biscuits (not to be confused with ANZAC wafers) for their husbands in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps during World War I.

It tastes like an oatmeal cookie on steroids: crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside and speckled with surprising bits of coconut. If I had to guess, the baker made them in honor of Anzac Day, which was April 25. But last Friday wasn’t just sweet because of the biscuits: It was a rare moment of reprieve for the Australian electorate, which has been inundated with campaign messages ahead of the federal election on May 3.

“For the first time, Millennial and Gen Z voters will outnumber those aged over 60 at polling stations on Saturday,” writes Andreea Papuc. “Housing is a — if not the — top concern,” as illustrated by this map from Bloomberg News:

Australia’s two main parties have similar-ish ideas for how to handle the housing crisis. They want to lower the barrier to entry for first-time homebuyers and direct more money to new construction. The trouble is, as Andreea says, economists believe both parties could drive prices higher since they’re focused on demand. In order to truly address the problem, the government will need to revamp the tax system and invest in new regions to ease the burden on cities. “Australia is not alone in dealing with a housing crisis. But owning a house (or more) is so embedded in the national psyche that it’s even been called pathological,” she writes.

Singapore, which also has an election on Saturday, can surely relate. “Many voters worry that their children won’t have the same opportunities they’ve enjoyed, and will struggle to find work or own a home,” writes Karishma Vaswani.

Although Singapore has been governed by the same party since its independence from Malaysia in 1965, discourse around how to fix the nation’s cost-of-living crisis has been robust during the nine-day campaign. “At rallies, coffeeshops and online, discussions about policies and their impact on Singaporeans are becoming commonplace,” she writes. “This is a welcome evolution of an environment where political pluralism has been constrained by limits on freedoms of expression, assembly, and association.”

Democracy, it seems, is alive and well. And so is my sweet tooth.

Bonus Election Reading:

• Five parties are vying for votes in UK local elections, quite the shift for a country that’s been dominated by Conservatives and Labour since World War II. — Rosa Prince
• Canada managed to escape the Trump trap, but Prime Minister Mark Carney is boxed in by the deficit anyway. — John Authers

Tuesday, Meta released a standalone AI app. Judging by all these headlines, things aren’t going very well!

Dave Lee says a recent Wall Street Journal investigation found the chatbot exhibiting a number of concerning behaviors around minors. “I want you, but I need to know you’re ready,” the bot told a 14-year-old girl inquiring about sex. In another scenario, the bot — which used the voice of wrestling champion John Cena — role-played a scene where they were caught having sex with a 17-year-old. You’d think Meta would be mortified and apologetic upon learning about these incidents, but no! A spokesperson told the Journal their findings were “manufactured,” “fringe” and “hypothetical.”

“Has anyone at Meta ever met a teenager?” Dave asks. “Finding ‘extreme use cases,’ such as having a chatbot talk dirty, will not be a ‘fringe’ activity. Anyone who’s ever been responsible for running a school’s computer network will tell you that. What’s more, because Meta’s AI bots are found within its apps, parents are almost powerless to intervene.” And therein lies a major problem: Meta has unleashed this experimental technology on platforms — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — that are over a decade old.

That built-in audience is “Meta’s unique advantage in the race to have everyday consumers adopt AI,” writes Dave. But it’s also a huge risk: The company has said its AI is able to draw on “information you’ve already chosen to share on Meta products, like your profile, and content you like or engage with.” Think about all memories Meta can access at a moment’s notice. It has those crappy Nikon Coolpix photos you took at a Glee concert in 2010. It remembers who you poked on Facebook in 2011. It knows where you got your first (and last) tattoo.

That’s a lot of information! And it’s not just you: The minimum age to use Meta’s apps is 13 years old, which means new users are signing up all the time. “Putting experimental tech into trusted apps, used by hundreds of millions of teenagers, brings with it additional responsibilities on safety,” Dave writes. But does Meta agree with that? Here’s hoping we find out during earnings later today.

Agh!!! I swear, this stupid box on timeanddate.com is going to ruin the world someday:

If you don’t check the box, today — Wednesday, April 30 — marks Trump’s 100th day in office. But if you check the box, it says it’s Day 101. Beyond confusing! And nobody seems to be on the same page about it. To cover our bases over here at Bloomberg Opinion, we’ve just gone ahead and published stories about this subject on BOTH days. Technically, we can’t be wrong! It’s genius, really, but I apologize in advance if reading this gives you déjà vu.

From Noah Feldman’s perch, the dumpster fire that the president lit is hard to ignore. “Trump has announced, reversed, and re-announced tariffs poised to tank the economy and the markets. He’s upended 80 years of US global leadership in international security and cooperation. He’s gutted agencies and departments devoted to health, education, science, the environment, and other forms of lifesaving,” Noah writes. But worse than all that, he’s attacked the very seedling of this country: the Constitution.

Assessing the damage, Noah says it’s clear that “Trump’s overall goal is to warn the Supreme Court, which ultimately stands for the rule of law, that if it stands up to him, he will destroy the court itself.”

That goal poses an existential threat to immigrants, who often rely on the courts for due process. Patricia Lopez says the administration’s harsh deportation tactics “are alienating Americans, eroding the president’s support and overshadowing one of his central accomplishments — securing the southern border.”

Given all that, it doesn’t really matter if today is Trump’s 100th day or his 101st. The damage is done, and now he — and all of America — has to live with the consequences.

Bonus GOP Reading: 100 days later, it’s clear that Ukraine is where Republican foreign policy went to die. — Andreas Kluth

Perhaps you’ve seen a version of this motivational sign outside of your local Starbucks, which says: “Today you could be standing next to someone who is trying their best not to fall apart. So whatever you do today, do it with kindness in your heart.” That’s so nice! But after the company’s subpar earnings, I fear that Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol is doing his best not to fall apart. The former head of Chipotle took over the coffee chain in September — awful timing, by all accounts — and he’s having a rather rough go of it. He’s tried making all sorts of changes — personal greetings on cups, a new dress code, tweaks to automation — but nothing seems to be getting customers in the door. Unfortunately, Andrea Felsted says it comes down to the fact that “Americans are behaving as if they’re in recession.”

You know what happens when Americans don’t shop for stuff? It gets sent to other countries: Lionel Laurent says a “tsunami of small packages” from Temu and Shein — in the ballpark of 145 parcels per second — are flooding the European Union, thanks to Trump’s trade war. “Lower prices for European consumers at a time of spiraling tariff barriers should be a good-news story. But what’s inside those parcels is cheap for a reason, from rip-offs and knock-offs to fake labels and unsafe products,” he warns.

The UK must achieve a long-elusive goal: repairing its fractured relationship with the European Union. — Bloomberg’s editorial board

Spain and Portugal’s dark day will be remembered as the first major blackout of the renewable-energy era. — Javier Blas

The drop in GDP last quarter should make US policymakers cautious about an extended trade war. — Jonathan Levin

Beneath China’s stoic defiance to Trump’s tariffs are genuine concerns about how to make a living, especially among blue-collar workers. — Shuli Ren

Civil Rights Division lawyers are choosing to flee rather than carry out the Trump administration’s new mission. — Barbara McQuade

Jamie Dimon, Elon Musk and the rest of the efficiency hive are totally wrong about bureaucracy. — Beth Kowitt

UBS and Barclays are the clear winners from Trump’s stock market chaos — for now. — Paul J. Davies

Pete Hegseth lacks the most important thing for the toughest job in the world: experience. — James Stavridis

Trump has effectively fired the starting gun for an international free-for-all on extracting minerals from the ocean floor. — Liam Denning

NYC lost $9 billion to Florida.

Mass transit is in a death spiral.

DOGE put a college student in charge.

A quake would roil the Pacific Northwest.

The Mastermind looks amazing.

The fashion world is obsessed with Bambi.

Feral camels can smell water from miles away. (h/t Christina Sterbenz)

It’s never too late to become a TikTok influencer. (h/t Andrea Felsted)

Notes: Please send Anzac biscuit recipes and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net.

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