Crazy Like A Fox There’s this really crazy, but really, really rich old guy. He’s got several billion dollars, and he’s not really interested in making more money. So he uses his billions to create this elaborate pranks that he pulls on criminals. He’s always famous, in the news, for buying really […]
Magic Money Scams
What, Me Worry? A fantastic case of accidental arbitrage happened back in the late seventies. This was right on an interesting boundary of two different techniques. Savvy observers of these two overlapping trend jumped on it and quickly profited. But like all arbitrage opportunities, this was quickly slammed shut. What happened […]
Stolen Teeth
Double Dealing Weirdos I have this really weird neighbor. He’s rich, he’s smart, and he’s retired from all the patents he’s created over the years. His recent project is developing an army of AI drones, about an inch in size. Each one is connected to the super computer is his basement, and […]
Reverse Engineered Cult
Free Seminar The other day I went to a free seminar at a local community center. Since it was free, I didn’t expect much. Usually at these things, they have some basic ideas in the first half, and then the second half is some kind of upsell. Only at this one, there […]
Storytelling Serial Killer
Tinder Murder There is a very elusive, very evil, very sociopathic serial killer than has been murdering about one woman every two months for several years. He meets desperate and lonely ladies on online dating, and he’s got the perfect story that sets them up for an easy kill. They believe his story, […]
Weaponized Love Spells
Sucker Every Minute PT Barnum famously said there is a sucker born every minute. But the corollary to that idea is that we are suckers because we are willing to believe things that are too good to be true. And when it comes to modern snake oil scams that we keep falling for […]
The Death of Hippocrates
Health Expo I went to this health expo a few weeks ago. It was kind of non-main stream expo, mostly supplements, lots of homeopathic based medicine. They had a lot of booths, mostly books and supplements. They also had a lot of talks, some by doctors, some by dieticians, but they were […]
Bacon Defense Patterns
Vegan Dinner Invitation A friend of mine invited me to dinner a couple of weeks ago. He warned me that it was going to be a vegetarian dinner. Which meant that there would be a lot of vegetarian dinner. Since I love to eat meat, I was a little worried I might […]
Long Game Occultist
License Scams Getting a license these days to sell something is difficult. A hundred years or so ago, if you wanted to sell something, you just sold it. An interesting problem from game theory is why it’s illegal to advertise cigarettes on TV. Why No Cigarette Ads? https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Aug11Loop.mp4 Most people assume that […]
Myths of NLP
What The Heck Is NLP? NLP has been around for a long time. It is a very peculiar set of communication tools. There are many beliefs surrounding NLP that are just plain false. The truth about NLP is that it is very simple to learn, and extremely powerful. But at the same time, there is […]