Pen Smith | Wall Street Memes

So the Artemis II astronauts are currently on their six-day trip to the moon and they’ll potentially head further than any human has been before, going around the moon and back. That’s a long way to go without a rest stop…

Because they immediately hit a snag when the fan in the urine part of the waste management system malfunctioned. Thankfully, the problem was assessed on the ground and a solution quickly implemented much to the relief of the astronauts.

“Happy to report that toilet is go for use,” Mission Control radioed the astronauts. “We do recommend letting the system get to operating speed before donating fluid, and then letting it run a little bit after donation.”

Although one ‘stronaut couldn’t wait and already had to go in a bag which is how the toilet-less Apollo astronauts had to do it back in the 60s. Ew.

To Boldly Go

Btw, did anyone watch the launch? It was pretty cool, idk, I’ve never seen a live rocket launch before and I thought it was pretty cool. Like you forget, right? You see enough in movies and clips from previous launches that it’s become commonplace and you forget that it’s actually an awesome thing. Like feat of human engineering type stuff.

Oh wait, this is ostensibly a finance blog so I guess I should discuss the price here.

This is NASA’s biggest rocket ever and the first step in the next era of space exploration: sending people to the moon and beyond. So obviously it’s expensive and the whole program has already cost $93 billion (2012-2025) and each individual launch costs upwards of $4 billion.

Now lots of people say that’s an expensive waste of money and that we should sort out our problems down here first. And sure, we should, but we can and should do both. People are working hard to solve our problems down here, yeah they probably need more money but it’s not like NASA isn’t taking money away from them.

NASA is relatively cheap, I mean, for comparison, the US defense budget is up to a trillion dollars a year whereas NASA is $24.4 billion a year. 0.35% of government spending. I’d say this whole thing is worth it as a side project.

Because think about it, what are you going to do when you solve all the world’s problems? Let’s say there’s no more war, no more poverty, no more climate change, no more inequality, everyone has the personal freedoms they desire, then what? What is humanity going to do once everything’s sorted? Probably go to space, right? Ok, now how likely is it that we’ll ever solve all those problems? We’re humans, we’ll always have problems, we’re always going to fight. So why wait for everything to be perfect before we begin some side quests?

Do you have your whole life in order before you start pursuing your dreams? No, you know that time doesn’t wait. You start doing it now.

This isn’t that interesting. I’m sorry to waste your time, but this is just a marketing stunt, basically.

The White House just posted a picture on X of a website they’d supposedly launched, provocatively titled ‘OnlyFarms.gov’. And if I have to explain that joke, you poor, innocent thing, what are you doing on Wall Street Memes Dot Com?

Except, this isn’t quite true, because typing in OnlyFarms.gov just redirects to the White House’s page for agriculture. It’s got a slow-mo montage of Trump hanging out with farmers so you know he cares and then it lists a bunch of policies that they’re doing for agriculture.

Damn, I wanted to see some sexy sheep dot gov.

So it’s just another bit of PR. Not worth writing about, ah, shit, I already did, didn’t I?

OnlyFarms? More Like OnlyGarms, amIright? hahaha

As the top comment on Reddit puts it really well:

“Everyone is talking about “OnlyFarms” instead of:

A record-high of 15,000 farm closures in 2025 (source).
A 46% increase in chapter 12 bankruptcies in the agriculture sector in 2025 (source).
The loss of 2.5 million acres of farmland in 2025 (source).”

And I’ll let you read all that for yourselves.

Point is, don’t fall for these government hijinks. They just want your attention, it’s more valuable to them than anything else. So make sure you value it too.

When asked a leading political question on the famously unbiased FOX News, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink did his best to dodge and answer diplomatically but still got slapped with some misleading, clickbaity headlines (see above).

In the clip, journalist William Bret Baier asks the co-founder of the largest money-management firm in the world, “Do you believe the woke era a failed experiment? The ESG, the DEI, the kind of push for that. When you talk about things you talk in a practical sense, what we can do, what we can get done. Looking back at that, how do you see it?”

You see the slight of hand there? Yeah, because it’s not very slight. Baier’s leading the topic to FOX’s agenda, putting words in Fink’s mouth and in the question equates not being woke as being practical.

Note that the quotes in this headline (and all the other clickbait headlines that reported on this) all quote Baier and not Fink. So whilst Baier might not have physically put words in Fink’s mouth, this publication certainly has.

I Fink He Fell Into A Trap

Because what Fink actually responded was way less incendiary, clearly trying to appease all camps and not end up as a headline, here’s his full response:

“Society moves, the pendulum moves all the time. In BlackRock’s case we are responsible for managing money for everybody. And even today, as you said, these, you know, renewables are less talked about. I could tell you right now we have many investors world wide investing in renewables trying to emphasise solar and other things like that. We’re working with occidental petroleum right now trying to build the best carbon capture factories in Texas right now. So do I believe the pendulum five years ago was too far? Yes.”

Then Baier’s ears prick up because he heard what he wants to hear, “You do?” he says.

“Do I believe we’re more pragmatic? And I’m personally more pragmatic and I believe…”

Baier jumps in again, “Do you believe BlackRock pushed some companies a little bit further left than you thought?”

“It was never our intention because our job is to be… I gotta be a fiduciary to everybody who gives us money…”

Omg, sorry, I’m transcribing this by hand and I’m only half way through, cba, this is taking ages. We’ll call it there, you get the point.

But you see what I mean? He kind of agrees, but idk, I just don’t like the leading question and then the internet running with the out of context quotes. Me included.

Oh, crap, I never got round to the five ESG Stocks Making U-Turns right now! Ahhhh!! My journalistic integrity! It’s melting! MELTING!! AHHHHHHHHH!!!!

In case you didn’t know, yes, New York financier, Jeffrey Epstein famously invented ‘bit-o-coin’ or ‘bitcoin’ for short.

Between bouts of molesting children, schmoozing with your personal favorite celebrity and blowing off Elon ‘Lingering’ Musk, ol’ Jeff was hard at work coding the blockchain by hand under the moniker Satoshi Nakamoto.

And honestly I’m personally disgusted that this man would stoop so low as to basically do a digital yellow face. The rest of his crimes I can stomach but I draw the line at cultural appropriation.

As revealed in the Epstein Files (so named because he was a pedo-file), J.E. was a significant backer in the early days of crypto. As MIT’s Joichi Ito said to him in an email, “used gift funds to underwrite this which allowed us to move quickly and win this round. Thanks.”

I mean, why wouldn’t he be? A new technology that enables anyone to move money anonymously outside of banks and regulation? Of course a sex trafficker is going to be interested.

To put it into numbers, Jepstein put $500k into blockstream and personally underwrote 74.79% of Bitcoin’s core development. And you know what that means too, right?

That means Jeffrey’s been getting a significant kickback from his early investment since this whole project began. As one X user put it succinctly, “BTC has been funding a global elite pedo group since 2015… great.”

Beyond bitcoin, Epsteinerry was also an early investor in ZCash and put $3 million into Coinbase in 2014, solidifying the man as a true visionary of our times.

The value of PEDOCOIN has rocketed up since the reveal of this news.

Jeffrey Epstein could not be reached for comment.

The official White House social media accounts just posted a cryptic video of some woman’s shoes teasing the launch of something or other and everyone’s going wild BECAUSE THAT’S EXACTLY THEY WANT YOU TO DO.

The video is blurry, handheld phone footage, pointed down at the camera-holder’s shoes so it looks like she’s not supposed to be filming. But what it does capture is two people talking. One says, “It’s so cool! It’s launching soon right?” and the other replies, “Yes.”

And if you’re curious about what they’re talking about SNAP OUT OF IT. Because you just fell for a classic viral marketing campaign that we’ve seen a million times before.

You just hint that ‘something’ is coming, frame it like it’s a hidden camera that wasn’t supposed to catch the information and if you already have a big enough following (like the goddam White House does) then people will be all over that shit because everyone loves a mystery and they love a secret.

But it’s hollow and obvious, the video equivalent of a clickbait headline (see above), if the clickbait amounted to no more than saying ‘Coming Soon!’.

White House? White noise.

I mean, we all can see what they’re trying to do but I just want to point out one more detail that I think really gives it away and that’s the ‘sound on’ Snap Chat-style caption. Because if this was an actual secret, an actual leaked video like it’s pretending to be, that’s probably not the caption you’d use. ‘Sound on’ is just your classic engagement bait. No, this is something that’s been carefully thought about and created by a PR team.

So yeah, this is nothing new, movies, books, music artists and product launches have been doing this kind of stuff since at least the 90s, it just feels weird/gross to see a government do it.

Like, we know that the White Social media has gone completely off the rails, posting whatever they want from AI slop to racist music videos, nothing could surprise us now. But this is still below them. And it’s below you. This is a soulless government desperately trying to get your attention.

Just remember, when someone shows you an advertisement, unless you work in marketing or something, your answer should always be ‘who cares.’

Don’t fall for it. Ignore and move on.

I don’t know what you expected here, but yeah, the FBI is buying up personal user data. This isn’t that surprising, I guess, but what’s news is that this is the first confirmation that they’re doing it after they said they weren’t back in 2023.

“We do purchase commercially available information that’s consistent with the Constitution and the laws under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and it has led to some valuable intelligence for us,” Patel told senators at the Intelligence Committee’s annual Worldwide Threats hearing.

Now it’s still true that the Supreme Court requires law enforcement to have a warrant before gathering data on people. But there’s no law against just picking up data if it’s already commercially available… LOOPHOLE!

The internet is a gold mine of personal data. Why shouldn’t the government be allowed their own pickaxe?

Well, now some politicians are arguing that this loophole should be closed because it’s fundamentally unamerican. Something, something freedom…

“Doing that without a warrant is an outrageous end run around the Fourth Amendment, it’s particularly dangerous given the use of artificial intelligence to comb through massive amounts of private information,” said Senator Ron Wyden.

But Committee Chair Tom Cotton clapped back, “The key words are commercially available. If any other person can buy it, and the FBI can buy it, and it helps them locate a depraved child molester or savage cartel leader, I would certainly hope the FBI is doing anything it can to keep Americans safe.”

Damn, why these guys all arguing all the time? Can’t they just agree on things? 🙁

This is all part of a series of ongoing senate hearings so we’ll just have to see how this plays out, but until then the only way to stay safe is with a VPN. Surfshark isn’t like other VPNs, with 14 different available flavors Surfshark will keep you safe. Use discount code WSM at checkout for 10% off, haha, no, just kidding, lol. We’ve got our own shit to shill. Go use our casino or something.

OK, there are a LOT of asterisks in that headline…

…because, when I say ‘architect’ I really mean, “aspiring architect”. …and when I say “unveils” what I really mean is ‘makes a website’. …and when I say “plan” I really mean, ‘3D model in SketchUp’. …and when I say ‘rebuild Twin Towers’ I actually mean ‘build two completely different buildings’…

…but ‘Aspiring Architect Makes Website For 3D SketchUp Model Of Two Random Buildings’ isn’t exactly clickbait now is it?

The “insane new feature” bit is true, though. You’ll never guess. OK, yeah, it’s lasers, how did you guess?

Our “aspiring architect and astronaut” (sic) obviously only wants to do step one of 9/11 (building the towers) and not step two. So to prevent this, the new buildings will have, “A radar tracking system, radio interception and communication antenna (to validate the threat) and as a last resort either anti-aircraft surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) or a multi-megawatt laser defense weapon” all mounted on the roof.

Makes sense, I mean, we all know airplane’s one weakness is laser pointers.

Twin Twin Towers

Oh and by the way, did I mention that these towers would be built in Chicago? Yeah. Oh and did I say they’d be massive data-centers? Because naturally, this is 2026 after all. Oh and did I mention the estimated cost is up to $20 billion?

Yeah, so, if you’re starting to think this isn’t a real thing, you’d be right.

This is the work of Raphael Chryslar (no relation) a aerospace engineering student in England. Chryslar has zero experience with architecture or construction but does have an obsession with the Twin Towers ever since he watched Home Alone 2 (his words, not mine) and now sports a tattoo of the WTC on his arm.

It all starts to fall into place when on the site, Chrysler describes himself as an “author, photographer, aerospace engineer, entrepreneur” and crucially, autistic. It seems that the Twin Towers just happens to be his hyperfixation.

And I’m not knocking anything here, it’s a neat-looking website and a lot of thought and work has gone into it. Will it get built? No. But maybe (hopefully) that’s not the point. As a fun fan-fiction (fan-architecture?) project, though, it’s well worth a look.

Without any fanfare or announcement, the Executive Office of the President has registered the domain name, ‘aliens.gov’ and we only know about it because a bot flagged the registration.

When asked by Decrypt about this development, White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly wrote “stay tuned,” followed by a smiling alien emoji.

This seems to imply Trump’s promise to release ‘the alien files’ (the X files?) might be coming to fruition. A month ago he ‘truthed’ that he’d direct the Defense Department to “begin the process of identifying and releasing” files related to aliens.

Now obviously this is yet another distraction to draw attention away from Trump’s bugbear, the Epstein Files (or the war in Iran, oil prices, take your pick). Yet this is something that the public have been asking for. Because people really want to believe, huh?

But if you were hoping that the government will publish confirmation of extraterrestrial life on this website, well, don’t hold your breath.

Aliens haven’t visited planet earth.

I know a lot of people will dispute that, you might even be reading this saying that I can’t possibly know and that’s why I want to make the statement crystal clear.

Aliens have not visited planet earth.

Sure, maybe there’s a slim chance that they have, but there’s a slim chance that unicorns exist that doesn’t mean you go around saying unicorns are real, no, you say, unicorns don’t exist.

Because how do we judge if something is real or not (can’t believe I have to explain this)? Have you witnessed direct evidence of the thing? Can you reliably measure something indirectly that would indicate the existence of the thing? Even without evidence, what is the likelihood, using other evidence, that the thing exists?

AND THEN ask these same questions to other explanations for the same sightings and you’re more likely to get to the real answer.

So with unicorns, for example, no one has seen a unicorn, no one has found indirect evidence of unicorns (a discarded horn, idk), and unicorns are unlikely to exist because we understand horse physiology, narwhal physiology etc and they’re very separate. And if they’re magical, well magic is pretty unlikely for its own separate line of questioning.

Now ask the same questions for other explanations for unicorns. We’ve seen stories about unicorns and can trace the folkloric lineage of unicorns back to the bronze age. We have indirect evidence of where people might have got the idea from (narwhal horns, idk). And stories about unicorns are likely to exist because unicorns are cool and you can come up with anything in stories.

So now let’s apply these questions to aliens:

Now you might say that people have seen evidence of aliens but I’d argue it’s often not direct evidence. Like, if you saw a light in the sky, you’ve not seen an alien, you’ve seen a light in the sky. For people that have directly experienced aliens however (like literally interacted with little green men or been probed or whatever) well, because our senses can be misleading (see: ‘dreams’) then we move on to the next question.

Do we have indirect evidence of something that would indicate aliens? Again, the answer is no. You might argue that whatever signs like crop circles or the pyramids or whatever indicate aliens but again those things are just the things themselves, the pyramids exist, yes, but they don’t say explicitly that aliens exist, you’ve made a leap there.

And then the last one, imagine we have no evidence pointing to or from aliens, what is the likelihood that aliens have visited earth? Well, we do understand quite a bit about the size of the universe and how difficult interstellar travel is and the likelihood of one tiny speck of space finding another speck of space is like throwing a grain of sand at a target the size of a grain of sand a mile away. Ie: unlikely.

Then alternatively if we run other explanations through the same line of questioning: we have direct evidence of humans regularly hallucinating, we can offer likely (even if not confirmed) explanations for supposed signs of aliens (aerial phenomena, optical illusions etc.) and the likelihood of those explanations are far higher than just simply ‘aliens’ because we’ve directly witnessed them existing in other instances.

So with all that, is there still a slim chance that aliens have visited earth? Yes, but in the same way that there’s a slim chance unicorns exist. It’s so, so, so unlikely and we have other more likely explanations then we might as well call it like it is:

Aliens have not visited planet earth.

So despite all that, I know you might not be convinced and I know a majority of Americans aren’t convinced and still want to believe. And so when this website goes live and Trump puts up a bunch of blurry footage of nothing you’ll all go wild for a few days. But then eventually we’ll move on and nothing will change so stoke more misinformation.

But let’s not do that this time, shall we? Let’s not get caught up in the hype.

Keep you’re feet on the ground, son, because you’re not getting beamed up any time soon.

THEY’RE POISONING THE SKY AHHHHH!!!!

Look, I didn’t want to have to explain this to you but the Daily Mail (a famously reputable publication), just ran a story entitled, “CIA accused of ‘poisoning the sky’ with toxins as files expose secret weather control agenda” and because it’s reached 10 million views on X, I guess I have to cover it…

Because it’s old news, literally half a century old, without any kind of new developments that make this newsworthy in 2026.

We’re talking about ‘cloud seeding’ and it’s an old technology that goes back to the 1940s and has nothing to do with contrails or conspiracy theories.

Yes, it was a real thing that sounds like science fiction but has been very well documented and is really interesting. Basically you fly up in a plane, drop a bunch of salt crystals or whatever into a cloud and it makes it rain.

The problem is it’s almost impossible to control and when it’s been tried, things have often gone awry. Turns out the weather is kinda unpredictable like that. Because of this, the concept has seen significantly less interest this century, although experiments continue and we’ve actually seen a small uptick this decade.

I don’t know weather or not this is real

The main project that the Daily Mail cites as being newsworthy is Operation Popeye, a cloud seeding project during the Vietnam War. The idea was to extend the monsoon season and flood out the Vietnamese fighters. And we all know how well that war turned out…

(That’s where I got the $15 million figure from, btw, a quick Google told me it cost about as much and that’s as much research as I’m willing to do for this.)

But it goes without saying that this has nothing to do with contrails, condensation trails, that are literally just that: water vapor. I know you want to believe the CIA is poisoning everyone with mind control agents or even controlling the weather but they’re just not. I’m sorry to disappoint.

Contrails might not be poison gas afterall, but they do potentially have an impact on global warming… oh, sorry, I forgot, the earth is flat and the moon landings were faked but climate change? Well, that’s just completely implausible.

So by all means, read up on cloud seeding, it’s genuinely fascinating. By all means, be weary of the bad stuff governments are doing behind closed doors. But please, just stay savvy out there and know when a shitty publication is using your good will and inquisitiveness just to get clicks.

Insanely bad!

Yeah, it’s $100 per hour, but it’s for a one off, eight hour stint so you’re only getting $800 dollars in money. Heck, maybe for you that’s a bargain, I mean, I spend my days bullying AI for free so might as well get paid for it, right?

Well, $800 doesn’t start to sound so worth it when you realise that you’ll be first up against the wall when the inevitable robot uprising takes place.

This job posting comes from MemVid, a startup that promises to “give your AI agent photographic memory” but otherwise seems to be only known for this job posting. Anyone else smell an advert?

Given that the job description requires “Extensive personal history of being let down by technology” and ends with “We’ll provide the chatbots – you provide the frustration” makes me think, yeah, this is literally just a stunt to put their name out there.

And we all just fell for it hook line and sinker.

ai bully job description — The full job listing.

Alright, I’m not going to spend any more time on someone else’s advert, I’ve got my own stuff to promote. Fancy a spin in the Wall Street Memes Casino? …Anyone?