I know the Gamestop story has been explained a bunch of times (and some may argue that it may be nearing its end) but this is a really fun explanation of it:
Money Is Fake and GameStop Is King: What Happened When Reddit and a Meme Stock Tanked Hedge Funds [Bitches Get Riches] – “My hat’s off to the day trading cowboys of r/WallStreetBets. By buying and retaining a mostly useless stock, these weirdly principled finance dorks are demonstrating, in real time, how fucking arbitrary the value of something can be. They are calling Wall Street’s bluff and fucking with the people who—for a living—regularly decide to drive an individual company out of business and its employees out of jobs.”
Now, when someone says “diamond hands” you’ll know.
I liked this next post not because of the list of ways to make money with Valentine’s Day, that’s fine, but I really liked the story that preceded the list. It highlights the truly important things in life.
How to Make Money with Valentine’s Day [The Thrifty Issue] – “In our house, as I was a single mother most of my kids lives, we had a different tradition. Each year, I would give them a chocolate rose with a letter telling them how much I love them, what is special about them, things I noticed through the year etc. It wasn’t until I overheard them the night before Valentine’s Day one year whispering about it in their bedroom that I realised how important this was to them. They looked forward to it every year and felt so loved by it.”
Are recipe boxes worth the money? [Be Clever With Your Cash] – “The problem is, they aren’t cheap. The normal price can easily be between £5 and £8 a portion. Possibly cheaper than a takeaway, definitely cheaper than eating out. But surely buying the ingredients yourself works out far cheaper? I’ve taken a look to see just how much of a premium you’re paying for the convenience.”
They’re not financially worth it. We use one, Sunbasket, not because it’s financially prudent but because it offloads a few meals from our mental planning each week. It’s something we only started during the pandemic and it’s very likely something we will stop once our kids go back to school. The convenience premium is worth it for us.
OK, as we go into the weekend, enjoy this story of outright fraud and how absolutely mindboggling simple it is to pull off (at least for a few years):
The Lion, the Polygamist, and the Biofuel Scam [Wired] – “How a member of a breakaway Mormon sect teamed up with a Lambo-driving, hard-partying tycoon to bilk the government for hundreds of millions of dollars.”