Definitely a solar eclipse.

Upper Deck was the king of sports trading cards and even though they were making hundreds of millions in the 80s, they got caught creating counterfeit versions of the most desirable cards to make even more money. Once they got caught there wasn’t much to be done as it wasn’t actually illegal for them to do so. It soured the collectors market for a long long time.

Circle back around to around 2000 and upper deck somehow got a license to print Yugioh cards in Europe. Only, they decided to start also making counterfeit cards of the 10 most desirable cards and made 50K of each of them and started seeding the collector market in the US by selling them in the states to make even MORE money. It wasn’t long before they got caught and then sued and settled out of court for some insane amount of money.

Somehow they’re still around and printing sports cards. It’s kind of mind boggling.

Fancy Steakhouse in my old neighbourhood was always empty. Went there twice and the only other people were a bunch of black suits talking with the owner in a separate seating area behind glass doors.

Third time I went, the place had been shut down with a federal seal on the door.

Good steak though, in hindsight maybe human, who knows.

Wells Fargo was my bank until they opened secret accounts in my name and stole my money.

This reminds me that I had to sign one of those code of conduct documents at work last week.

I’m all for preventing corruption etc, but I have to say I am disappointed I have not once been offered a bribe. I’m not even asking for much, just one tiny bribe would be nice. Just to know I’m valued. You know?

Some years ago before online banking, buying a fairly sought after but relatively uncommon type of used hot hatch car. Back then there was a strong chance potential car buyers would have cash for the transaction. Magazine ad made out it was from a dealership/garage. Something about the phone calls got my spider sense tingling, especially when they claimed the car was elsewhere so I’d have to meet them off site. I’d already traveled so thought what the hell, I’ll look but definitely not buying from this chump outfit.

I’m a big muscular fella, just over 6 feet tall & around 19 stone of solid muscle so fairly intimidating looking & was standing leaning against my own car waiting for them to turn up. All of a sudden I hear the roar of the car, strangely with with a bunch of undesirables in it hanging out the windows. They slowed right down checking me out, thought better of it coz the driver floored the accelerator & disappeared. No doubt in my mind they were planning someone was gonna get mugged for a few grand that day. No doubt they’d done it before.

Usually some form of business plan that amounts to sanctions / regulatory avoidance presented with a straight face to a panel of VCs / investors / potential partners. Then the underlying structure is a Ponzi scheme.

My strategy so far has been to ask “how is your business plan different from just doing crimes?” with a voice loud enough that people outside the meeting room can overhear – like in some cartoon where some character says all the quiet parts loudly and the loud parts quietly.

Hopefully with time, people will stop bringing this kind of crud to the table, or at least stop inviting me to the meetings.

Probably the “space theory” from the German BND (like the national NSA here). When they were confronted shortly after the Snowden revelations with why they’re illegally collecting network data in bulk on their own citizens (in addition to international ones) they basically said “Well, we collect the data from satellites in earth’s orbit, and because that’s not on German soil, that law doesn’t apply so it’s OK for us to do this”. I mean, of course they will do whatever they can to grab as much data as they can, and use whatever excuse or reasoning that allows them to continue to do so, and these kinds of institutions seem to exist in some extra-legal space anyway, so they don’t really have to fear a lot of repercussions unfortunately, but that excuse was REALLY wild. Also shows the absurd ways in which systems or laws designed to protect us from abuse are being successfully and routinely gamed.

Idk but you putting the title in quotes is kinda shady.

Had a really shaggy looking guy awkwardly bounce-walk up to me on a college campus and ask me if I wanted to buy Aderall.

I said, “naw, I’m good man.” And he bounce-walked away.

I worked in the computer and camera department of a local Circuit City a few years before they went out of business. We sold everything from your basic pocket digital camera up to some comparably expensive entry level DSLRs. We were trained to talk to our customers to get them talking about what their needs were, then show them several models which would fit the bill. Most customers would tell us about how they want to photograph their kids at sporting events, or how they want a camera that they take out for a night on the town (this was just before iPhones were a thing), etc.

One day I had a guy walk up looking at the expensive DSLRs so I introduced myself and asked him what sort of photography he was looking to do. Instead of the usual enthusiastic response, he seemed really uninformed and uninterested. He just knew he wanted the best camera we had. This was immediately odd, but I pressed on and went through my spiel about different accessories, like a camera bag, spare batteries, memory cards, lenses, etc. Whatever I offered him, he wanted. Including a telephoto lens that cost as much as the camera.

When it came time to ring him up for something like $1500 worth of merchandise, he produced a standard looking Circuit City credit card. A lot of folks had these, and processing a sale using one in our ancient mainframe point of sale system had a very unique and specific workflow compared to normal credit cards. If I had any doubt in my mind as to what was really going on, it vanished when that fraudulent card appeared on my screen not as a circuit city store charge but as a typical Visa. I froze for a split second, which I’m sure he noticed. We were also trained not to confront or try to stop criminals, and for all I knew this guy standing 2 feet behind me was ready to shank me before grabbing the goods and running for the door. So I processed the transaction and let him go on his merry way. The floor manager was MIA and didn’t find out what happened for at least an hour. Nothing ever came of it. I don’t think they even tried to check the tapes.

I bought an old box full of used cast iron cookware from a mostly boarded up corner store that smelled weird. I had spent the day looking through yard sales trying to find some and we needed to buy a drink, it was the only shop for a while.

The door was open but the lights were off in the middle of the day, so it was really dark in there except from the glow of the drink fridge at the back. Really unsettling. There was an old lady at the counter but she didnt look up when we passed her. We went through to get to the drinks, the food on the shelves was dusty and looked like it had been there a while. Then crammed into the back corner was a small collection of second hand junk, including a box of cast iron cookware. Exactly what I had been looking for. $10 for the lot. Great deal. Paid the uninterested lady and got the hell out of there.

They got busted for distributing drugs and shut down not long after. Which answered pretty much all the questions I had about that experience in general.

I worked for a Penske car dealership that had an annual Christmas giveaway to employees.

We found out that the GM had been removing parts from vehicles and selling the parts for profit. Some of those profits went to his pockets. Some of those profits bought the company Christmas gifts.

I have a very nice $200 MSRP knife set that was received as a Christmas gift one year.

So yeah basically all the gifts were bought with money stolen from Roger Penske. Can’t say I care. Roger Penske is an evil fuck.

In a restaurant in Brussels. At the next table, two people discussed an upcoming minister-level EU meeting. One person was in charge (or at least had influence on) the meeting agenda, and was urged by the other person to drop a particular item off that list. They argued about possible excuses for not having this item on the meetings agenda, until the bureaucrat agreed, and the lobbyist handed him an envelope.

Have a friend with drug issues. He visited with me another friend that worked for a non-profit and collected various things for a cause. Things like pain meds.

Not big enough to be a business. But enough to gift his friends some pain medications that could have been usefully for the recipients…