It’s Labor Day. Washington has spent decades cutting Iran off from the dollar. The weak link turns out to be American banks themselves. Plus, the return of quaaludes, where to get the $100 cheesesteak, and world class design for cheap (first time? Join 523,000 Betterists here).
Friday’s most clicked link: Peek inside Ford’s $30K EV
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Billion Dollar Loophole
Roughly $9 billion in suspected Iranian funds moved through American clearing accounts in 2024 (WSJ), a Treasury analysis found. Every dollar transaction on earth must ultimately settle through a U.S. bank, and Iran works through partners that hold those accounts.
One invoice showed an Iranian firm ordering 150,000 circuit boards and sensors from a Chinese supplier, with the $650,000 payment routed through a clearing partner in New York. Components like those also build drones.
On August 28, regulators proposed cutting an Egyptian bank's Emirati branch off from U.S. correspondent accounts after it processed $1.8 billion for 103 companies. The bank has 30 days to respond. The FinCEN report behind $9 billion.
Sugar Beats Stocks
Raw sugar jumped 21.5% in August, its biggest monthly move since October 2010. That puts the sweetener up roughly 20% for the year, ahead of the S&P 500's 13% gain over the same stretch.
Europe's beet crop cooked in a summer heat wave, cutting EU output an estimated 19%. With oil above $90, Brazilian mills are routing more cane into ethanol instead of sugar. Brazil supplies roughly half of world exports (food price index).
Futures peaked at 18.66 cents per pound on August 28. Citi's three-month target is 19 cents, and the next chart resistance sits at 20.19. The next food price print lands October 2.
The move: check sugar exposure in input contracts before the October 2 print | The support and resistance levels behind it
Everest Dethroned?
Everest holds the record for highest point above sea level at 29,032 feet. Change the measuring stick and it loses. Measured base to summit, Hawaii's Mauna Kea wins at 33,500 feet.
Most of Mauna Kea is underwater, roughly 20,000 feet of it, so climbers stand on a peak whose true base they will never see. Ecuador's Chimborazo wins a third way, sitting 6,800 feet farther from Earth's center.
A viral post claims two structures 100 times taller than Everest were just found underground. Those are seismic anomalies in the mantle, not mountains.
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How to Turn Your AI Into a World Class Designer
Ask an AI to build you a landing page and you get the same purple gradient everyone else gets. Ask it for something unique and you get a different purple gradient. Anshu Chimala led design teams at Apple for 12 years. His fix is three moves:
First, make the model generate a random alphanumeric string, then build the design off that string. Real variety has to come from outside the model.
Second, run a separate AI as a critic. Feed it only a screenshot, never the code, and make it score the work out of 10 until it hits 9.
Third, cut. AI adds and never subtracts. Deleting is what makes a design look expensive.
Mike Tyson’s Iconic Prison Workout
Tyson walked into prison at 285 pounds. He walked out three years later at 215, in the best shape of his life (Joe Rogan describes Tyson’s look here), with no gym and no equipment (obviously, we are not recommending prison, just the only workout that fits in a space the size of a parking spot).
The daily protocol:
2,000 sit-ups, broken into 40 sets of 50 across the day
500 push-ups, in sets of 50
Jumping in place, no rope, after lights out
Footwork drilled on the same floor spots until the concrete wore down
8 to 10 miles running every morning in the yard
The part worth stealing is that he never did it in one block. He scattered it from wake-up to lights out, and he gambled push-ups with friends instead of money so the work happened whether he felt like it or not. Full video here.
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▲ Gas generators arrive in new EVs from Ford, Hyundai and Jeep, with Ram promising 690 miles | What 690 miles looks like on battery alone
▲ Baobab trees sell for $500,000 to estate owners who will not wait for saplings to grow | How they lift a 100-ton tree
▲ Musk allies spent millions pushing MDMA therapy toward approval, and FDA takes public comment through October 5
▲ TSA reverses a post-9/11 rule, letting screened non-passengers past the checkpoint without a boarding pass
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Fun Links
Steve Martin’s simple card trick [Video]
Easy maple breakfast meal prep [Recipe]
Christian Bale’s 2003 Tacoma [Video]
Inside Aaron Pierre’s gym and fridge [Video]
Movie posters have gotten worse [Post]
Barclay Prime’s $100 cheesesteak [Photo]
Award-winning Batman fan film [Video]
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