The Ponzi that got people to exercise
Happy Saturday. Three things this week, each with a last paragraph.
1. The Ponzi scheme that accidentally worked
In the spring of 2022 an app called STEPN watched your GPS and paid you crypto for the mileage, and people were paying thousands of real dollars for sneakers that existed only on a screen. The money came from whoever bought in after you did, which is the oldest math there is, and by summer it ended the way that math always ends. What sticks is the season in the middle: people who had never voluntarily exercised in their lives were outside at 6 a.m. hitting ten thousand steps because an app owed them money. Every legitimate fitness product on earth struggles to produce that, and a Ponzi wearing running shoes did it in weeks. Read the piece →
2. Your beans are fine
Somewhere in the past year it became fashionable for coffee experts to warn that your beans are covered in invisible mold. The compound is real — ochratoxin A, studied, regulated, genuinely present in a share of green coffee — and the scary posts leave out the dose. Roasting destroys most of it, brewing removes more, and your wine and raisins are carrying more than your cup is. The pitch works precisely because it's unfalsifiable at home: you can't see it or taste it, so the only cure is the $30 bag. Check roast dates instead; that's the thing that actually changes how the coffee tastes. Read the piece →
3. Five thousand pages about a girl who controls bugs
One person posted chapters twice a week from June 2011 to November 2013 without missing a deadline, and the result runs longer than all of Harry Potter on a WordPress site that still looks like 2011. Worm is about a bullied teenager who goes out on her first night wanting to be a hero, gets mistaken for a villain, and runs with it — and finds the villains treat her better than anyone at school ever did. Escalation is the whole engine, and it gets considerably darker than the premise suggests. The first arc is short, and it's the test. Free, if you've got a weekend to lose. Read the piece →
That's it. No part two, no thread, nothing to scroll. See you next Saturday.