Quick Hits

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Quick Hits Archive 1H2025

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Quick Hits Archive 2022

Quick Hits Archive 2021

Quick Hits Archive 2020

January 9, 2026

The Seahawk’s beat the Rams with the first 2-point conversion in overtime history.
China has increased its auto exports from about 300k in 2010 to about 7mm in 2025.
The Fairmount area in Fort Worth is considered the largest “bungalow-neighborhood” in America.
10,000 people showed up at Ryan’s Place in Fort Worth in 1911 to witness the city’s first airplane landing. The pilot was named Roland Garros. The French Open tennis center is named after him.
Roland Garros was a rugby player…not a tennis player.
Jim Beam is shutting down its main bourbon distillery indefinitely. It accounts for about 33% of the company’s total production.
The production cycle of a bottle of Jim Beam is about four years.
The US Postal System introduced the zip code in 1963.
The Boston Bruins players that climbed into the stands to fight the Madison Square Garden fans after a game against the Rangers in 1979 were fined $500.
There are no bridges over the Amazon River.
Gulf of America oil production has almost doubled since the dip in 2020.
No hurricanes made landfall in the US in 2025.
There are 36 candidates to be President of Peru.
American households currently have an average of 2.8 subscriptions. This is down from 4.1 in 2024 and 4.4 in 2023. This category includes streaming, delivery, apps, and more.
The kicker for San Diego State had the highest accuracy rate of any kicker in history earlier this season. His nickname is “The Hefty Lefty.”
There was a previous player nicknamed “The Hefty Lefty.” It was Jared Lorenzen (a quarterback who had a cup of coffee with New Jersey’s Football Giants).
Nevada passed a law that eliminates the mandated middleman rule in disseminating horse racing data. Bugsy Siegel started this government enforced grift back in the 1940s.
New York has banned single-use Styrofoam coolers.
Pets can be included in restraining orders in Pennsylvania.
California has changed the law pertaining to plastic bags at grocery stores five times in the last 11 years.
Plastic waste increased by 47% in 2024 because of one of these California laws.
A new law in California allows you to return a rental car whenever you want (within a few days).
Another new California law: Pets must be at least one year old to be sold.
And another California law: Corn tortillas must contain folic acid.
And another: Declawing cats is now illegal.
And one more: Diwali is now an official holiday in California.
Virgina’s 6% sales tax now goes to 10% in restaurants or on other prepared food.
Video Killed the Radio Star was the first and last song every played on MTV.
Jim Harbough has more career rushing yards than Bo Jackson.
About a third of all college football players entered the transfer portal on the first day.
The Boston Marathon did not allow women to run the race until 1972. In 1966, a woman jumped out of the bushes and unofficially ran the race. In 1967, a woman entered the race with her initials. When she was discovered, an official tried to tackle her. Her friends fought him off, and she finished the race.
First-cousin marriage is legal in New York and California (among others).
Austin has 19 buildings taller than 492 feet. In 2017, it only had three.
There is a golf course in South Dakota that abuts a school football field. There is a track around the field. There is a fence around the track. The end zone of the football field is considered “in bounds” on the golf hole.
A $400k shipment of lobsters was recently hijacked in Massachusetts.
The term “Dixie” comes from the $10 bills issued by Citizens Bank in Louisiana in the 1850s and 1860s. “Dix” is the French word for 10. The bills were not legal US tender. But they were widely accepted in the riverboat trade.
Airport rides account for 15% of Uber’s mobility bookings.
Utah allows AI to renew medical prescriptions.
Barnes & Noble is looking to become a public company again. It has 721 stores in the US.

December 19, 2025

There is some “academic research” that claims the stock market does poorly on the days after popular streaming shows are released. The idea is that everyone stays up all night binging the new shows. And, apparently, sleepy people like to sell more than they like to buy.
The cost to insure “war risk” for ships sailing through the Black Sea has jumped about 225% from November to December.
Polymarket had a betting market called “Will the Time 2025 Person of the Year be leaked?”
Ring Around the Rosie is not about the black plague.
White Christmas is the best-selling single of all time.
El Paso High School’s football stadium is considered one of the top 10 most beautiful in the nation. USA Today ranked it as #2 in 2019.
In 2016, an eighth grader in Houston was confronted by school security for allegedly using counterfeit money in the cafeteria. Apparently, the school staff did not think $2 bills were real.
The Cayman Islands is the largest external holder of US Treasury debt.
The Saturday before Christmas is called Super Saturday in Retail circles.
Before the 1950s, lobster was called “poor man’s chicken,” and it was often fed to prisoners.
People in Albany do not call hamburgers “steamed ham.”
Streaming accounts for 46.7% of all TV viewership.
The 1-point conversion safety is listed as a scoring opportunity on the CBS Fantasy Football platform.
Bottlegate in Cleveland in 2001 was the first time an NFL game had been called over before the time expired…until commissioner Taglibue called the locker rooms and told the teams to go back out on the field for the final 48 seconds.
Beer caps are now always removed by the vendor because of Bottlegate.
The personalized license plate 370H55V was deemed offensive by the DMV in Texas.
60% of the Netherlands would be underwater if not for the engineering systems throughout the country.
Holland is not one but two provinces in the Netherlands (North and South).
Dutch comes from the word Deutsch.
Alaskans carry the highest average credit card debt in the US ($7,700).
Lacrosse was a medal sport in the Olympics in 1904 and 1908.
Read the license plate upside down. (Yes, true story.)

December 12, 2025

To clarify, it is possible for an NFL or college football team to score a single point in the whole game. But you cannot be the winning team with only 1 point.
The first conversion safety occurred during the Texas vs Texas A&M game in 2004 (Texas won).
A conversion safety is yet to happen in the NFL. It has been a pro rule since 2015.
Both the offensive and defensive team are able to score a conversion safety. The defensive one would require the offensive team (kicking the PAT or going for 2) to get tackled in its own endzone.
The US Treasury prints about two billion one-dollar bills a year.
The US Treasury still prints two-dollar bills…but not every year. They are printed only to replace worn bills or from specific bank demand. Treasury printed about 100mm in 2022 and 2023. But they did not print any in 2021 or 2020.
The Raiders were losing by 10 points with four seconds left. They decided to kick a meaningless field goal. Meaningless except the gambling spread in the game was eight points.
Someone once turned in a bottle cap from a 22-year-old Mountain Dew promotion involving Nintendo. Nintendo honored the claim. The guy got a free Super Nintendo, Wii U, and some Mountain Dew clothing.
Criminal trespass is sometimes called entering without breaking.
Vigorish comes from the Russian Yiddish word meaning “winnings.”
The DP World Tour turned a par 5 into a par 3 during today’s tournament.
A Boston dentist created the wooden golf tee in 1890.
The final 696 pennies minted have sold at an auction for almost $17mm.
Fiat made a custom electric car that is only 20 inches wide. The traditional Panda is about 5 feet wide.
48% of all golf courses in New Jersey are private. That is the most of any state.
Tin Can Crab Nachos cost $30 at today’s Army – Navy game. It is served in a Navy Destroyer.
Hogs were traditionally slaughtered around Christmas time for food safety reasons. And, thus, the Christmas tamale was born.
The St. Louis Cardinals hold the record for the longest NFL play from scrimmage without a touchdown: 98 yards.
Jalen Hurts became the first quarterback in NFL history to turn the ball over twice in the same play.
Tom Landry once wore a bullet proof vast during a game against the Rams.
Lahaina Noon happens twice a year in Hawaii when the sun passes directly overhead without casting any shadows,
Chalk Creek Jr. told me that the mesh on a microwave door is called a Faraday cage. The holes are too small for the length of the microwaves to pass. But they are small enough to let light waves pass.
There is a sports “league” called Grand Slam Track. It owes about 90 vendors $8mm.
The Cowboys-Chiefs Thanksgiving game was the most watched regular season game in NFL history. It beat the previous record by 36%.
Singing Second is the coolest thing in sports.

December 5, 2025

The Minnesota Wild (NHL) broadcast a recent game in an Ojibwe language which is spoken by the Anishinaabe people in the upper Midwest.
Pan Am used to run a helicopter shuttle from its namesake building in Manhattan to JFK airport. A tragic malfunction in 1977 ended the service.
The Talatan solar farm in China sits on 162 square miles. It has over 7mm panels.
A full-grown Bison can be over six feet tall and weigh 1500 pounds.
It is possible for an NFL team to score a single point in a game.
Army threw a touchdown to its tight end for the first time in 17 years.
Scotland is selling bonds to the public for the first time since 1695. “Freedom!”
The NASCAR driver Kyle Busch is suing his life insurance company for turning $10mm of premiums into $1.5mm in value.
The Ho-Chunk tribe in Wisconsin is becoming one of the louder voices against prediction markets.
Canada has a Minster of Environment and Climate Change, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, and Minister Responsible for Official Languages.
A Bloomberg analyst calls for silver to either rally to $75 or fall to $40. (Helpful?)
One of the prominently featured Chicago Bears in its Super Bowl Shuffle video was backup QB Steve Fuller.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the names that received write-in votes for the mayor of New York City: Lou Gehrig, Hank Aaron, LeBron James, Sandy Koufax, Walt Frazier, Bad Bunny, Harriet Tubman, Jesus Christ, and Bart Simpson.
Wall Street has lots of silly names, acronyms, and phrases. A new one (at least to us) describes the scenario when two or more creditors are vying for better terms from one borrower: Creditor-on-creditor violence.
Jack Nicholson made $5mm during his 10 days of work filming A Few Good Men in 1992.
Jason Alexander (Costanza) was originally cast as Lt. Weinberg.

November 26, 2025

20-17 is the most common score in NFL history. No Scorigamis this week.)
Sharks living near Greenland have been estimated to be 392 years old (+/- 120 years).
An Italian man was arrested for trying to renew his dead mother’s ID so he could continue receiving her pension benefits. He dressed up as her…to no avail.
There is a fern in China that naturally extracts rare earth elements from the ground. Monazite crystals are formed. (If you believe the Chinese.)
The US Army had dogs roaming the front lines in WW1. The bulldogs would deliver cigarettes to the troops.
A study involving Harvard students reveals that these students think they should primarily be graded on their efforts…not their actual grades.

November 19, 2025

Scorigami! Buffalo beat Tampa Bay 44-32 to make the 1095th unique score in NFL history.
There is a company called Gopuff that apparently delivers cash to you from your bank account (they literally go to the ATM for you).
Robinhood is looking to partner with Gopuff so you can take a margin loan in cash and have it delivered to you.
Back in the mid 1990’s, we had a Colombian broker that said he could get our stranded money out of Venezuela. He would go into the jungle with a duffle bag. We opted not to go down this route. Hindsight tells us that we should have!
Target has a new holiday smile policy for their workers. If a customer walks within 10 feet of an employee, the worker must smile, make eye contact and wave. If the shopper enters a four-foot window, the worker must greet them and “initiate a warm helpful interaction.” We will be avoiding Target at all costs this holiday season.
One of the three parts of government that has been funded for the next year is Congress. They get paid even if the government shuts down all over again. Dept of Ag is another one which means we don’t have to hear about SNAP for another 10 months. The Department of Veteran Affairs is the third one.
Two things being considered for the next wave of government funding (before Jan 31) include allowing Senators to sue the government (?) and the airport trust fund can be used to pay air traffic controllers (we told you flight cancelations was a bridge too far for politicians).
When a CEO returns to his former company, the average performance of that stock is 10.1% points worse per year than his original stint at the company.
The Oakridge Boys sang back-up on Paul Simon’s Slip Sliding Away.
Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is You” has already entered the Billboard Hot 100.
There is a random guy on X that only replies to tweets that incorrectly use the term cement. He simply replies to strangers with “concrete.”
Russia supplies 20% of the enriched uranium used in US commercial nuclear reactors.
The UK only has four oil refineries.
The UK levies a 78% marginal tax rate on oil and gas producers.
The UK Health security Agency recommends yoga and climate cafes to help alleviate anxiety and mental disorders stemming from climate change.
A former Alaska Airlines pilot who tried to crash a plane while in flight with 83 passengers has been sentenced to time served (46 days).
The company responsible for “Baby Shark” just IPO’d in Korea at a valuation of $400.
China is the global leader in the production of preserved mackerel.
There are over 4,000 varieties of potatoes in Peru.
Guinea pig is considered a delicacy in Peru. Here is our boots-on-the-ground contact’s confirmation:

November, 12, 2025

MoviePass, the movie ticket subscription service that has had some ups and downs (including bankruptcy), has launched a movie-based prediction market. This will include betting topics such as award winners and critics’s ratings. It will also operate a fantasy competition in which you draft celebrities…for what we have no idea.
A contestant during the Miss World Chile pageant sang an original song of her “death metal” band called Decessus.
In the Miss Universe pageant, a judge called Miss Mexico “dumb.” The contestant was kicked out after responding.
Amherst beat Willaims 14-13 in the 140th edition of The Biggest Little Game in America.
Scorigami? Amherst’s 14 points were a combination of four field goals and a returned two-point conversion. Now that is exciting football!
In 1995, the font page of the New York Times declared, “Amherst beats Willaims in 0-0 tie.”
Scorigami! Houston beating Jax 36-29 is the 1094th unique score in NFL history.
The Carolina Panthers have not won a game as the betting favorite in over four years (0-11).
The coastline of Lake Superior is over 500 miles longer than the entire eastern coast of the US.
The US is the 14th largest shipbuilder in the world.
Sonder Hotel filed chapter 7 bankruptcy so quickly that they had to kick guests out of their hotels.
Atlantic City taxi fares are capped at $13 (if travel is within the city limits). (Loose correlation to our Miss America theme.)

November 6, 2025

Applications to law schools are up over 28% this year vs last. They are up 73% vs two years ago.
Car repossessions have surged to their highest level since 2009.
It is speculated that Diane Keaton left $5mm to her dog Reggie.
Kalshi, a federally regulated prediction market in the US, is looking to hire “tarot card readers, palm readers, psychics, fortune tellers, oracles, wizards, and individuals born with divine intuition.” The one stipulation is that “YOU HAVE TO BE UNEMPLOYED.” (Emphasis theirs!)
The CEO of Coinbase concluded his quarterly earnings conference call with, “I was a little distracted because I was tracking the prediction markets about what Coinbase will say on their earnings call. And I just want to add here the words Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain, staking, and Web3 to make sure we get those in before the end of the call.”
The football Cardinals are 4-10 lifetime on the road on Monday Night Football. All four wins are against the Cowboys in Dallas.
QB Josh Allen has more rushing touchdowns than the great Earl Campbell.
The Danish National Chamber Orchestra once performed after eating ghost peppers.
Fecko Stinko was the name of an immigrant to the US in 1892. (Yes, this is completely random).
Tomatoes growing in the Galapagos are experiencing what scientists are calling “reverse evolution.”
The story of the Auburn football coach being fired was broken early because some local sleuths discovered that his standing tee-time at the Auburn University Golf Club had been canceled.
The Motion Picture Association is suing to stop Instagram from using its PG-13 classification as it is a registered certification mark.

Oct 31, 2025

X (Twitter) plans to start selling premium “handles” from $2500 up to $1mm.
French law prohibits the Louvre from insuring its art collections.
The Everglades are now home to thousands of pythons. In 1992, Hurricane Adnrew destroyed a python-breeding facility, and the rest was history. (We have reported on this before, but it is back in the news because some are pushing for some sort of formal python hunt day).
The Dallas Stars (1999 World Champions) have had six coaches that had two (or more) stints as head coach.
13,000,000 “memecoins” have been issued in 2025.
When Manny Ramirez was with the Boston Red Sox in 2004, during training camp, he found a check for $800,000 in his boot. It was from 2003.
The country of Lesotho is the highest in the world when measuring to its lowest altitude. All of the African country is above 3.281 feet.
The Malabar is the largest squirrel on worth. It typically measures three feet. It has blue, red, and orange hues.
Kalshi, the federally regulated prediction market, argues that prop bets on individual player performance are legal swaps (and not sports bets) because these have “potential economic consequences.” They are referring to the players’s sponsorship deals!
A new time interval has been recorded: The zeptosecond. It is one trillionth of one billionth of a second. It is the time it takes for light to traverse a hydrogen molecule.
Bugatti made a Chiron entirely from Legos.
Monday was the only day of the year that all four major sports leagues had games.
There is a class action lawsuit against Hersey that claims consumers were defrauded. Buyers were deceived by the Halloween-themed “Reese’s peanut butter pumpkins” labels which depicted a “pumpkin-shaped chocolate with triangle eyes and a grinning mouth carved to reveal the filling beneath.” The suit was filed last year and dismissed. It has been refiled with new claims of economic harm. (We thought this was another example of frivolous nonsense…until the Chalk Creek neighborhood kids, unsolicited, lamented that the Reese’s pumpkins were a scam because they looked nothing like the packaging!!!).
Footballs are called pigskins because they used to be made with pig bladders inside of a leather casing.

Oct 17, 2025

The University of Chicago has a Department of Comparative Human Development.
Amazon in the UK has altered cover photos of James Bond movies. He no longer holds a pistol.
Philadelphia sports set a record this week. No city had ever seen its NFL team lose, its NHL team lose, and its MLB team be eliminated from the playoffs on the same day.
A Lakers fan is suing Lebron because his silly Decision 2.0 announcement “made him think Lebron was retiring and caused him to spend $856 on tickets to his last game.”
Princeton is going back to mandating standardized test scores for admission. The school concluded that it “found out that academic performance at Princeton was stronger for students who chose to submit test scores than for students who did not.” Generalissimo Franco…dead.
It is legal to own a racoon in 14 states.
U-Michigan’s survey tells us that “sentiment lifted for consumers with large stock holdings and fell for non-stockholders.” Generalissimo Franco…still dead.
There is a PGA caddie with the nickname Crunchy Pete.
The Jets had -10 net passing yards this week.
We once bought heavily discounted “obstructed view” tickets to the Jets game in London. The view was obstructed by the goal post.
Polymarket called the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. The winner’s probability/price went from 3.7% to 73.5% within minutes once the outcome had been determined but not officially announced.
The town of Rockport, MA has banned Halloween yard-skeletons that are posed in “seductive, suggestive, or scandalously straddling positions.”
Rockport’s animal control officer has been tasked with enforcing the ordinance. Her response, “Now I have to decide if a pelvic tilt is suggestive? This town needs therapy.” There is a “Skeleton Watch” hotline to assist in cracking down on “problematic posing.” A Macarena-dancing skeleton has been exempted.
Stellantis has a commercial that says something along these lines, “For the Superbowl, we have a jump ball that involves pitches.”
The governor of Illinois won $1.4mm gambling in 2024 according to his IRS return. Apparently, this was from playing blackjack on a single trip to Vegas with his wife.

Oct 9, 2025

There is an ultramarathon in Denver which requires runners to eat at 9 Taco Bells along the race route.
San Diego has banned digital coupons.
Trading Places is based on the real story of Thomas Peterffy. Before he was the owner of the large online platform Interactive Brokers, he was a floor trader in NY. A film producer bet him $10k that his random buddy (also a movie/music guy) could not last as a trader under his watch for a year. Peterffy took the bet and won the bet.
Eastern Michigan University has a new baseball field that has grey turf for the base paths instead of the traditional brown dirt.
Eastern Michigan has a grey football field.
There are more private equity funds in the US than there are McDonald’s.
The starting running back for the Dallas Cowboys was the valedictorian of his high school.
California has made it illegal for hedge funds to buy claims from insurance companies against utilities (typically for fire damage) without disclosing the price to the utilities and giving them the right to match the price. (This effectively will end the quick settlement periods and result in long, drawn-out litigations).
One of the billionaire founders of massive hedge fund Jane Street and chess grand master Gary Kasparov accidentally funded an attempted coup against South Sudan last year.
Jack Nicklaus’s granddaughter is marrying a man named Todger Strunk.
Lehman Brothers’s London division is finally winding down as it exits the court-ordered “administration” after 17 years. The company was able to recoup almost $38b. Most creditors have been repaid in full with an extra 8% interest.
The real Rebbeca DeMornay reused to guest star on Seinfeld.

Oct 2, 2025

Scorigami! We missed the opening week with the Bills beating the Ravens 41-40. This was the 1,092 unique score in NFL history.
Scorigami! The Cowboys and Packers 40-40 tie was the 1,093 unique score in NFL history. It was the second highest tie score in league history (the Oakland Raiders vs the Boston Patriots tied 43-43 in 1964).
The same amount of natural gas that can fit into a beach ball can fit into a golf ball when the gas is liquefied (LNG).
There is a lady in California that charges $30k to help you name your kid.
MLB did not have any no-hitters this year. It was the first time since 2005.
There have been 39 no-hitters since 2015. 10 of those were combo no-hitters (more than one pitcher).
There have been 326 no-hitters in MLB history.
Bad Bunny (?) will headline the Super Bowl halftime show. The prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi somehow predicted this (somehow = insider trading).
Some whacky investor has been standing outside of the rapper Drake’s house for over a month (not 24-7). He is trying to get his attention to buy the meme stock Opendoor.
McDonald’s is bringing back its Monopoly game. One of our favorite stories was the rigging of the game back from 1989 to 2001. An insider at the company that made the game pieces just pocketed the winners and sold them to friends. There is a good documentary about this entitled McMillions.
The new MCD Monopoly game will be done through its app. About 25% of MCD’s sales are done through its loyalty program on its app.
Part of Spain is completely enclosed within France.
There is a small island on the Bidasoa River which forms part of the border between France and Spain. The island switches sovereignty every six months. Spain governs it from February through July. France governs it from August through January.
China owns over 277k acres of US farmland.
The NHS, the socialist run healthcare system in the UK, officially says first-cousin marriage is “linked to stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages.”
The NHS does not believe in screening for prostate cancer.
The Yogi Berra quote of the week by Falcons QB Michael Penix, “I gotta throw the ball to the wide open receivers when they’re open.” Yogi would be proud.
Candle wax is flammable as a vapor (after you snuff out a candle, you can light the lingering “smoke” back on fire).
It was illegal to eat meat from land animals in Japan from the year 675 to 1872.
The Detroit Tigers lead the Cleveland Indians 1,168 to 1,167 in head-to-head action after their win today (boo!).

Sept 25, 2025

A plaintiff’s lawyer in the Oregon lawsuit against Big Oil is facing ethical misconduct allegations. He cited independent research against Exxon and the others. He never disclosed that he wrote the “independent” research!
IMDB ranks films and splits the results by gender. Pride and Prejudice (#3), Frozen (#6), and Wonder Woman (#7) are in the top 10 of biggest ranking discrepancies by gender. These three are viewed more favorably by men.
The city of Los Angeles is attempting to tax self-directed equity investors as stockbrokers (which face an additional gross receipts style of franchise tax).
Purdue University is a state school.
Scorpion venom is the most expensive liquid in the world. It is about $40mm a gallon.
Surgical lights do not cast shadows.
The first water slide in Texas was created in 1903.
There is a 58-year-old freshman playing defensive line for Lycoming College.
Amherst College had a 31-year-old defensive lineman in 1991 (not us!).
The day after tomorrow is called overmorrow.
When you combine an exclamation point and a question mark (which we do quite often), it is called an interrobang,
That after-rain smell is called petrichor.
21% of all 60-yard field goals in the NFL since 2014 have been against the Giants.
UNLV won a football game in the Eastern time zone for the first time this past weekend (against our poor Miami (Ohio) Redskins).
When Louisiana legalized online sports betting (OSB), 70% of the first bets were parlays.
Over 10,000 crypto tokens have been launched containing “Charlie” or “Kirk.”
Meta is building a data center in northeast Louisiana. It will boost the state’s electricity consumption by 15%.
The average monthly payment for used car loans in the US is $529.

Sept 18, 2025

The NBA is making a rule change in terms of how statistics are measured. Last second “heaves” will no longer count against a player’s field goal percentage (but it will help it if he makes it). But they will still count against the team’s field goal percentage.
If this rule were applied retroactively, Steven Adams’s career three-point field goal percentage would go from 5.9% to 50%.
The revenues from the “honey deuce” drink at the US Open (tennis) reached about $17mm. This was a 32% increase over last year.
The average “pensioner” in France has a higher income that working-age adults.
19.2% of “TV viewing” (which includes plenty of things not considered tv) is still done through traditional broadcast. Cable is 22.5%. And Streaming is 46.4%.
Rick’s Cabaret, a publicly traded operator of gentlemen’s clubs, is being investigated for improper treatment of government tax auditors. In other words, the company bribed the New York state auditors with free trips and “entertainment” at its clubs. (Side note: Looking at the indictment, it appears the auditor was requesting the special treatment much to the dismay of the Rick’s mgmt. team.)
It took five days for the King of England’s staff to set the table for the fancy dinner with Trump.
When the CEO of United Airlines was asked why he thought Spirit Air would go out of business, he replied, “because I am good at math.”
Tik Tok has a 20% market share of mobile streaming.
The Tulane QB is sponsored by Manischewitz.

Sept 11, 2025

The quarterback for Duncanville High School (TX) is legally named Maximus The Great King Denson. King is his middle name.
The government is making changes to regulations for autonomous vehicles. These include getting rid of gear shifts sticks, windshield defrosting and defogging systems, and some pesky ‘lighting systems.”
Friday was national cheese pizza day. We never had cheese pizza until college.
Pete Twonsend’s famous line “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” from Won’t get Fooled Again was inspired from the Who’s Woodstock performance. When the professional protester and felon Abi Hoffman rushed on stage to deliver a political speech during a break, Townsend hit him in the head with his guitar while chasing him off the stage.
A German journalist was arrested and has been sentenced to seven months of probation for posting a satirical meme about the lack of free speech in Germany.
The Church of Latter-Day Saints is the fifth largest private landowner in the US.
Dairy Queen invented the Slurpee, but 7-Eleven licensed the product and created the brand name.
The Syracuse football team had to run sprints on the field after a narrow win over UConn.
A D3 matchup between Rowan and Case Western ended in a 17-14 tie (not a typo).
A caddie at the famed Cypress Point Club on the Monterrey Peninsula lived on the course for eight months back in the early 1980s. He built a hut in the woods with a mattress and a hibachi. He is still a caddie there after 43 years.
Texas has a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
Arnold Palmer was one of the two co-founders of the Golf Channel.

Sept 3, 2025

3400 college football players changed teams via the transfer portal for this season.
Box turtles are notable for their ability to completely enclose their bodies within their shells.
Chalk Creek’s father once made us late for preseason football practice when he stopped to rescue a box turtle in the middle of the road.
A former Premier League soccer player is trying to be a pro golfer. He shot +34 over par through two rounds in a qualifying tournament. He did not qualify.
Dollar General reported an improvement in margins partially because of “shrink improvements.” Dollar General recently ripped out their self-check-out kiosks.
Sam Altam, the self-anointed king of machine learning and thinking, recently blamed human error for inaccurate charts and numbers in a presentation. (We do not know if this is our chartcrime, of if there isa whole proliferation of bad charts from the geniuses at OpenAI.)
Tough Mudder, a series of grueling races in bad terrain with physical challenges, has incorporated an electric shock obstacle involving dangling wires that deliver 10,000-volt electric shocks.
A single bet of $550k on Texas +1 moved the line against Ohio State to Texas -1.
The five most-bet games in college football all lost against the spread.
The Australian bank ANZ accidentally sent an email to the 100 staffers that were about to be fired. The bank apologized and offered to pay for “psychological counseling.” The workers were still fired.
The Limbo was created in Trinidad and Tobago as a funeral ritual.
A chipotle pepper is just a jalapeno that has been smoked and dried.

August 27, 2025

The first commercial flight in America was between St. Petersburg and Tampa.
Customs officers at Detroit Metropolitan Airport have recently discovered imports of primate meat and rodent meat.
There are now more ETFs (exchange traded funds) than publicly listed companies.
10 biotech companies have pivoted to “digital assets” in 2025.
The largest holder of “Taylor Swift and Travi Kelce get engaged in 2025” contracts accumulated his position on Sunday and Monday before the Tuesday announcement.
80’s hip hop band De La Soul is currently exploring legal options against the author of a book chronicling the band’s life story. They call it an “unauthorized” account.
De La Soul was the first band to be sued for sampling another artist’s work (The Turtles). The band had initially tried to pay The Turtles $1,000 for their unauthorized use of their work. De La Soul lost $1.7mm in a settlement.
The platypus does not have a stomach.
China’s Three Gorges Dam has increased the length of a day by 0.06 microseconds.
Jerry Rice had 27 dropped passes in his 20-year career.
Switzerland has 400,000 safety bunkers.
Cut and Shoot is the name of a city in Texas (Population 1,158).
A fire in Turkmenistan has bene burning for 54 years. It is known as The Door to Hell.

August 21, 2025

A Philly man who was awarded $4mm for being wrongly convicted and jailed for murder is back in jail for…murder.
Flamethrowers are illegal in Maryland.
The NBA is looking to expand (yawn).
Roblox is banned in Qatar.
Phil Mickelson has never been ranked #1 in the World Gold Rankings. He has been #2 for 270 weeks. The same player was ranked ahead of him for every single one of those weeks.
Downtown Dallas has 9x more crime than downtown Fort Worth.
Sound Hound revenue jumped due to its recognition of “unbilled receivables.”
The Texas Rangers (2023 World Champions) bullpen has the second lowest ERA in the league. It also has the second-most blown saves.
The number of adult conversions to Catholicism in the US has more than tripled in four years (after collapsing for 20 years).
Six former presidents of Peru are or have been in jail (this includes former president Garcia who killed himself before actually going to jail for corruption).
The permit to build the new stadium for the Cleveland Browns has been denied by the Ohio Department of Transportation. The height of the proposed building is too tall given its proximity to the airport.
The stock of Dominoe’s Pizza has outperformed Google since the latter’s IPO in 2004.
Trains in New Jersey face disruption at a rate 6x of those in New York and Connecticut.
Bed, Bath & Beyond is back. When the meme stock went bankrupt a few years ago, Overstock bought the brand name. Overstock changed its name to Beyond in an effort to boost the banner. Now Overstock is changing its name to Bed, Bath & Beyond and will be opening up brick and mortar stores. (Name Changes are one of our red flags.)
Bed, Bath & Beyond announced it would no longer be operating in California.
The king of the junky SPACs is back. Here is how Chamath sums up the risks in investing in his latest self-enrichment scheme: “If (retail investors) lose their entire capital, they will embody the adage from President Trump that there can be no crying in the casino.”
The son of the crown prince of Norway has been charged with 32 criminal counts including four rape charges.
When asked about Fed Governor possibly committing mortgage fraud, St. Louis Fed President Schmid said filling out a mortgage application is too difficult.
53 batters hit over .300 in major league baseball in 2000. This year there are only eight.

August 13, 2025

McDonald’s will be testing a new drink this fall in the category of “dirty sodas.”
Boyd Gaming recently sold its 5% stake in FanDuel back to its parent Flutter. When combining licensing income on top of the sale price, Boyd made about $2b. They bought the stake for $10mm.
The running tally on federal money spent on EV chargers is $19mm…for each one. 384 have been rolled out.
Two members of the band The Chainsmokers, are private equity investors. We have talked about this one before (and others like it). They have just raised a third fund with $100mm. Total AUM for the firm is $225mm. Apparently, these guys are real investors unlike most celebrity pitchmen. We still would not give them any money.
A two-year-old in India killed a cobra by biting it in self-defense.
New York City is creating a Department of Sustainable Delivery.
High Noon, an alcoholic seltzer drink, accidentally put some of its product into Celsius energy drink cans (nonalcoholic).
The giant dam about to be built in western China (otherwise known as Tibet) will supposedly use the amount of cement equivalent to a two-lane highway that would circle the world five times. (Technically it will be a string of five dams which will incorporate a 2,000 meter drop in the river over a 50km stretch…we apologize for the silly use of the metric system).
China accounts for 30% of the world’s hydroelectric power.
China’s Three Gorges dam took over 18 years to bring to full operating capacity. The communists “relocated” over 1mm people during its construction.
The Netherlands use to have a water slide at an amusement park that kept riders/swimmers/divers submerged underwater for 15-20 seconds. It was decommissioned in 2010.
Sam Snead’s record-setting tournament win tally includes a tournament that had four participants.
Chevy Chase was in the predecessor band to Steely Dan while in college.
The most used word on the New Jersey Wikipedia page that does not appear on any other state’s page is Forms.
Two almost identical Roberto Clemente baseball cards sold over the weekend. One went for $9k. The other went for $1.15mm. (Clearly, we will never be PSA graders.)
Yemen has the second highest gun ownership per capita in the world.
It cost more to build Grand Theft Auto 6 than to build the tallest building in the world (Burj Khalifa).
Calvin Peete only hit one ball out of bounds during his 1200 rounds on the PGA Tour.
There is a new world record for smashing walnuts in 60 seconds while holding a raw egg in the crushing hand: 293.