personal finance

A Last Week Tonight segment on retirement plans, high fees and bad financial advice, with comedic sketches. It explains how fees eat into retirement savings and favors low-cost passive investing.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on payday loans and predatory lending, covering how they trap borrowers and target the elderly and military. It features Sarah Silverman.

Patrick Boyle analyzes SpaceX's IPO prospectus, covering its financials, speculative products, AI business, related-party dealings, compensation, and a governance structure with minimal shareholder rights.

Patrick Boyle examines SpaceX's planned IPO at a roughly $1.75 trillion valuation. He covers the merging of other Musk companies, orbital data center claims and the fast-track index rules that may help the listing.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on auto lending, showing how lenders steer vulnerable buyers into subprime loans and crushing debt. It uses comedy sketches to explain the practices.

A Last Week Tonight segment on credit reports, explaining their outsized role in people's lives and how often they contain critical errors.

Coffeezilla gives a comprehensive history of Tether, the stablecoin issued by a company controlled by the owners of Bitfinex. He lays out accusations that it is not fully backed.

A Last Week Tonight segment on mobile homes, showing how large investment companies are making this affordable housing option less affordable. It covers residents who rent land and cannot move their homes.

Coffeezilla reacts to Sam Bankman-Fried's explanation of yield farming on the Odd Lots podcast, arguing he effectively described a Ponzi scheme. The video was made well before FTX collapsed.

Louis Rossmann explains why NYC commercial landlords keep storefronts vacant rather than lowering rents. He points to commercial mortgage-backed security loan terms and inflated property valuations.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment examines prediction markets such as Polymarket: the legal and moral questions, weak regulation, and insider trading and manipulation concerns.

A long personal account by a former NixOS contributor of his experience in the community, his ban and the governance events. He aims to correct what he sees as a false narrative about the NixOS drama.

A short 2013 video in which Roger Ver says Mt. Gox's withdrawal delays are not caused by a lack of liquidity. Mt. Gox collapsed months later, and the description carries a later update and apology.

A trader channel clips Jim Cramer describing market manipulation techniques hedge funds use. The clip is framed as context for odd short-term market moves.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment explains how data brokers collect and sell personal information, including a stunt in which his team bought data to identify members of Congress.

CGP Grey argues that a classroom works well only for the one student pitched at the average level, and sketches a future of personalized instruction. It introduces the idea of a Digital Aristotle, a tutor for every learner.

Ted Nelson, in his Computers for Cynics series, gives a critical history of Xerox PARC's vision of personal computing. He lists what he sees as the limitations and wrong turns in PARC's approach to the desktop and documents.

Filmmaker Max Joseph's 35-minute video essay asks whether you have to be a jerk to be a successful leader. It draws on Adam Grant's givers and takers, Robert Greene and famous demanding directors.

A Last Week Tonight segment on the US Postal Service's financial troubles. John Oliver explains why it matters, what pushed it to this point, and what viewers can do.

Sabine Hossenfelder explains why she left academia, criticizing its incentives, funding and career structure. She gives a personal account of the social problems in science.

A Last Week Tonight segment on how much of a member of Congress's job is now fundraising. John Oliver interviews Congressman Steve Israel about the costs of political spending.

A long video essay by Natalie Wynn of ContraPoints on cancel culture, drawing on her own experience of being pile-on targeted by other leftists. It is theatrical and discursive, mixing argument with performance.

Physicist Angela Collier's nearly three-hour critique of Richard Feynman's public legacy. She examines how his books, written with Ralph Leighton, shaped a mythologized great-man image, and covers his personal behavior.

Serpentza, a Westerner living in China, describes Chinese influence efforts abroad and the cultural conflict between Shen Yun and Confucius Institutes. It is a commentary from his personal perspective.

A fasterthanlime video essay arguing that GitHub Actions is a poorly designed system, with a history of personal computing and CI, and a look at how it works behind the scenes. It is sponsored by Brilliant.

A short clip of Steve Jobs explaining why Xerox failed, arguing that product people lose out to sales and marketing people once a company becomes dominant.

Climate Town argues that the personal carbon footprint idea shifts blame to individuals and traces it to oil company marketing, urging collective and political action.

A Philosophy Tube video essay on data, surveillance and the algorithms built on personal information, touching on Cambridge Analytica and the 'nothing to hide' argument.