Asklemmy

Definitely a solar eclipse.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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....

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.