Archive (Page 3) • A Scammer Darkly • Buttondown

If It Ain't Woke

November 4, 2022

Anti-Woke The term ‘woke’ has become both a straw man and a guiding star for the American right - they are on a crusade against the forces of wokeism,...

Seize the Means

October 28, 2022

Unions It is 2022 and - in an unexpected twist - union support is on the rise. Approval of labor unions is at its highest levels since 1965. Amazon,...

October 21, 2022

Rent We have talked before about US rents - a key part of the Consumer Price Index driving inflation fears. People (economists) like to say skyrocketing...

October 14, 2022

Immigration We have talked about recent Republican stunts to ship migrants to cities and states run by their political rivals. While it is easy to be...

October 7, 2022

Inflation We talk a fair amount about inflation around here, and so do many news outlets. Much of the spotlight is given to economists, who tell us their...

September 30, 2022

Inequality It has been said that America is a country full of temporarily embarrassed millionaires - or capitalists, depending on which quote you prefer....

September 23, 2022

Political Donations Here in America, we love paying for stuff the government should provide for free, like health insurance or filing our taxes. One quirk of...

September 16, 2022

Railroads Normally when we’re talking about railroads around here it’s fish stick- or robbery-related. However! As we talked about back then, disgruntled,...

September 9, 2022

Barry Seid Two weeks ago, news broke that a secretive billionaire who made his money selling power strips had given the proceeds of his company’s sale to our...

September 2, 2022

Britain Here in the US, we hear talk of energy crises every summer and winter, as air conditioning strains electrical grids and severe winter storms threaten...

August 26, 2022

Student Loans This week, Dark Brandon released a plan to eliminate an estimated $300 billion worth of student debt, and make debt repayment significantly...

Go With the Flow

August 19, 2022

Meta This year’s big tech/finance story about Facebook - Meta, whatever - was its first ever quarterly drop in users. It was covered exhaustively (even...

Pumped Up Kicks

August 12, 2022

Enochian Biosciences Successful tech con artists of the last ten years tend to share a story - charismatic, attractive founders with big ideas to change the...

Ballot Amendments Good news - Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejected attempts by the state legislature to restrict abortion rights: In Kansas, there was...

Man's Best Friend

Veterinarians If you own a pet, or were lucky enough to avoid puppy scams during the pandemic and adopt one, you may be having difficulty booking...

Sewers Bucks County, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, is selling its public sewer system to a private company for $1.1 billion dollars: The Bucks County Water...

No Rules, Only Power

Laws A lot of people on the Internet have become Constitutional scholars, but I assure you I have not joined their ranks. Despite this, I did find the...

Abortion When we talked about abortion in May, I wrote this about the anti-choice movement: They’ve won this battle, and since they know their ideas are...

The Supreme Court Last week the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, essentially making it illegal for half the country’s women to get abortions. We’ve...

COVID-19 Deaths The official US pandemic death tally as of this writing is around 1,040,000, though the real number is certainly much higher. We’re number...

Buy Now, Pay Later During the Great Depression, the use of layaway allowed consumers to purchase things over time. It faded in the 1980s with the rise of...

Guns We talked last week about gun violence. Saturday night, half an hour after I finished dinner, multiple people fired into a large crowd a block from...

Gun Control After last week’s horrific shooting in Uvalde, Texas the gun control debate is once again front and center in American politics. One side -...

Vacation Bookmark Purge

I am on vacation this week (hello from Italy and Albania!) so here are some stories that have been taking up space in my bookmarks for awhile. Enjoy! Vox -...

Nurses We have talked before about travel nurses, and how the pandemic exposed critical shortages in the American health care system. Travel nursing is the...

The FDA The F in FDA stands for Food, and while the agency has been in the news for the last 2 years as it oversaw the COVID-19 vaccine approval and rollout,...

Abortion It is both upsetting and unsurprising that the US Supreme Court is poised to overturn abortion rights in the country, leaving it up to individual...

BrightSpring Health BrightSpring Health Services is one of the nation’s largest group home operators. These group homes provide alternatives to institutional...

Spotify Spotify has been in the news lately, mostly due to controversy over Joe Rogan’s podcast. Lost in the culture war are the musicians complaining that...

Funding Secured

Elon Musk The world’s richest shitposter is in the news again, because he’s trying to do a hostile(?) takeover of Twitter for $40 billion dollars, an amount...

Axie Infinity If you’ve followed crypto news at all, you may have heard about the concept of “play-to-earn” games - players can generate digital assets by...

St. Jude You may be familiar with St. Jude Children’s Hospital because it’s advertised all over the country: Each year, the Memphis hospital’s fundraisers...

Charges Declined

Justice For over a year since his presidency, people have been speculating on when Donald Trump and his companies would be charged with crimes. Two parallel...

Point of No Return

Returns Online retail has grown by leaps and bounds over the last two years. Sales were up 14% in 2021, according to the US government. Additionally, more...

Hertz When you run a car rental company and the world enters a global pandemic that causes business and recreational travel to come to a halt, your business...

Russia Look, this is not a war blog, and we do not pretend to understand international relations and centuries-old ethnic disputes around here. What may be...

Honk if You're Angry

February 25, 2022

Trucker Convoy Last week the Canadian government used sweeping emergency measures to break up a protest that had shut down Ottawa for three weeks. It froze...

Government Cheese

February 18, 2022

Cheese Last week, I came across a Twitter thread about the US government’s massive underground cheese storage caves. Like you (presumably), I did not know...

To Have and To Hold

February 11, 2022

Bitcoin Bandits The Internet has fallen in love with a new celebrity couple - the (alleged) hackers who stole $4.5 billion dollars’ worth of Bitcoin:...

Gleaming the Cube

February 4, 2022

Philly PD Workers who suffer serious injuries on the job can apply for disability benefits, a system run by the government. There are significant...

January 28, 2022

Gas Stoves Natural gas appliances in homes have become a flashpoint - sorry - as evidence mounts they can cause dangerous air quality in homes. Now, a...

January 21, 2022

Afghanistan The last time we talked about Afghanistan, it was to reminisce about all the money defense contractors siphoned from the war effort, and how...

Where's the Beef?

January 14, 2022

Easterday Ranch Last spring, we talked briefly about a ranch in Washington that tried to sell Tyson Foods a bunch of cattle that didn’t exist. At the time, I...

Deliver a Verdict

January 7, 2022

Elizabeth Holmes We have been talking about Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, for a long time. This week, the latest chapter of the saga ended, as...

Seeking Settlement

December 24, 2021

Purdue Pharma We have talked before about Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family. After years of negotiation, it seemed the Sacklers were going to finalize a...

Inflated Claims

December 17, 2021

Progress Residential Every so often, we read articles about giant investment firms buying up houses in America to either resell at a profit or, more often,...

December 10, 2021

Aspiration We have talked recently about greenwashing, a popular way for companies to present themselves as eco-friendly without actually doing things to...

Degrees of Separation

December 3, 2021

USC This week the New York Times published an article claiming millenials are dealing with inflation “for the first time”. Some people have pointed out that...

A Bountiful Feast

November 26, 2021

ConstitutionDAO Well, The community of crypto investors who tried and failed to buy a copy of the U.S. Constitution last week has descended into chaos as...

November 19, 2021

Climate Change Last week, the United Nations concluded its COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. Many headlines were penned about the progress made, though...