money

While everyone’s packing their bags for Canada, the smart ones will be headed for Finland.

“Why Finland?” you ask. Well, the Finnish government is going to be the first European country to pay the unemployed a basic monthly income of €560 or $587.

This isn’t just done for nothing. This is a social experiment, which aims to “cut government red tape, reduce poverty and boost employment, according to The Guardian.

via GIPHY

The experiment won’t be open to everyone, but rather 2,000 randomly picked citizens who are already on unemployment. The trial will run for the next two years.

Olli Kangas of KELA, the Finnish government agency responsible for the program said of the experiment, “It’s highly interesting to see how it makes people behave. Will this lead them to boldly experiment with different kinds of jobs? Or, as some critics claim, make them lazier with the knowledge of getting a basic income without doing anything?”

Either way:

brb moving to Finlandhttps://t.co/UJnuVyoQ0W

— Ian Dransfield (@ianinthefuture) January 3, 2017

Next time you buy a lottery ticket, maybe let the machine pick your numbers.

According to TIME, Dante Castillo from NJ swears by his lucky numbers, but it was when a clerk accidentally allowed the machine to generate his ticket that he hit it big. So ask yourself, are your lucky numbers worth $1-million, because his weren't.

via GIPHY

It seems like everyone won in this scenerio. Well, almost. Castillo won the Cash4Life lottery, but he and his wife chose the lump sum of a cool million. The convenient store will get $10,000 bonus from the lottery officials for selling the ticket. And the machine who generated the ticket, nothing. Again, we're just digging our own grave when it comes time for the Great War between man and machine.

So what does this prove? Does luck exist? Why do we hold on to superstitions when it's clear the universe is left up to chance and coincidence? Oh, whatever. This guy lucked out.

via Paul Trillo

A Pokémon card sold at action for $54,970. That's a lot of money for a Pokémon card. Not that you’re worried that that card might’ve been in that box of Pokémon cards you threw out of your dad’s house last weekend.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Everything’s fine.

The Pokémon card in question, which sold at Heritage Auctions over the weekend, was a super-rare, mint condition “Pokémon Illustrator” card, one of 39. Not that one of the other 38 could’ve been in that box marked “Pokémon Cards and Other Junk” you just tossed out on Sunday.

Just count to ten. Count to ten. It wasn’t in there. It couldn’t’ve been.

Just look real close at it. Holographic of chubby little Pikachu painting a Charmander. Oh, no. That was definitely the card.

via GIPHY

According to Mashable,

“Before you start thumbing through your old Pokémon card collection to see if you have an Illustrator yourself, the card was never in circulation — the 39 cards that exist were handed out as prizes for a three different Pokémon illustration contests held by CoroCoro Comic in the late-‘90s.”

Mashable also translated the card, which honestly, is a huge relief:

"We certify that your illustration is an excellent entry in the Pokémon Card Game Illust Contest. Therefore, we state that you are an Officially Authorized Pokémon Card Illustrator and admire your skill."

Oh. I guess, I should stop frantically calling my dad and finish the article before…

Wow, pretty cool about that card, huh? Hey, who wants to go get some frosty chocolate milkshakes and never talk about this again.

via Super Amazing Cupcake

How much would you pay to argue with your family? $5? $50? $500?

How about $50,000?

via Randar

That’s what New York City restaurant Old Homestead is hoping for with their $50,000 Thanksgiving Day meal. This year’s feast, which suffered a $5,000 price increase from last year — inflation, I’m sure — offers “more opulence and decadence than the lobby in Trump Tower,” according to Gothamist. Not even Robin Leach has caviar dreams as rich as this menu.

Gothamist runs down the menu:

A "20-lb roasted free-range, organically raised $85/lb turkeys, seasoned with a proprietary exotic spice mix of spices imported from the Middle East, basted with imported $17/oz extra-virgin olive oil from Italy."

"A rich stuffing - the operative word is rich because it consists of $465/lb imported Japanese prized Wagyu beef, $54/lb foie gras, and $46/loaf sourdough bread imported from the U.K."

"Whipped sweet potatoes topped with $1,600/oz caviar from Caspian Sea."

"Green beans not exactly like the ones the first Pilgrims and Native Americans shared - these are prepared with chunks of imported $90/lb ham from pigs fed a special root diet."

"Homemade pumpkin ice cream with $4,200/bottle rum-infused eggnog sauce.”

Look, a $4,200 bottle of eggnog sauce sounds good until you consider Stovetop Stuffing, a stuffing so good that children all over the neighborhood devise elaborate schemes to get two Stovetop Stuffing dinners. Yeah, Stovetop's pretty good.

via Internet Lurker

You’re not just getting some special greens filled with pig chunks, though. You also get tickets to a Giants game, a night at the Waldorf (room service and breakfast in bed included), limousine travel, a Fifth Avenue shopping spree, and, as Gothamist puts it, “You'll also be able to punch a carriage horse in the face take a horse-drawn carriage ride through Central Park (which is practically the same thing).”

So, if you’ve got the money, why not consider blowing it on something totally frivolous like this meal. Your fellow Americans will thank you for it.

How much would it cost to buy a city? That's a question usually reserved for Batman villians, but it could be done if the first 12 members of the Forbes' World Billionaire List pooled their money together. 

The folks over at PropertyShark did some math to see how "the wealthy dozen" could divvy up Manhattan. They put their results in a handy infographic, which we posted below. 

via Randar

As for the outer boroughs, PropertyShark said: 

"Sprawling Queens would have a record low population density under this scenario, with just the top 3 billionaires – Gates, Ortega and Buffett – having enough zeroes between them to buy the entire borough, for a total value of $192.5B.

As for Brooklyn, it would be the turf of the next 6 billionaires on the Top 10 Richest list, once they put forth a little over $245B to cover the bill. Ranking 4th to 9th on the Forbes list, Carlos Slim Helu, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Michael Bloomberg and Charles Koch could trade in pieces of Manhattan for the entirety of cool Brooklyn."

It's all very cool and very expensive. Fortunately, you don't need to buy the city to enjoy the infographic.  

via by PropertyShark

Imagine hitting a million-dollar jackpot and finding out that the grand prize was a complimentary hotel dinner? 

That's exactly what happened to Katrina Bookman, a New York woman who won $42.9 million on a slot machine and found out she would be recieving a steak dinner instead of money. Apparently, the machine was broken. But hey, maybe it's a really, really good steak dinner.

via Reddit

Resorts World Casino in New York, owner of the machine and afforementioned steak dinner, says that they don't have to pay becuase the slot machine malfunctioned. In fact, the machine was offering more money than the machine advertised. They weren't ready for the power of the selfie, though. Bookman snapped a quick picture of herself in the happiest moment of her life. Now, she and her lawyer are saying that she's entitled to at least the maximum payout from the machine, roughly $6,500.

"I should win the max," said Bookman. "And I feel like I should treat [the manager] to a steak dinner." 

Please, Katrina, keep your money. Buy yourself two steak dinners. 

The New York State Gaming Commission is siding with the casino, saying that malfunctioning machines void any winnings. The machine even says as much. However, they did not comment on the value of the steak dinner and whether it was worth $42.9 million. 

Originally, the plan was to replace Alexander Hamilton on the ten dollar bill but fans of Hamilton (presumably the man and the musical) protested due to his influence on creating the modern American economy. 

Instead, she will replace Andrew Jackson on the 20 dollar bill although he will probably still be featured on the back. 

This issue caused a lot of controversy when British builder Paul Hopkinson originally shared this video on Costa Coffee's Facebook page.  

Responses ranged from angry (and very British) to extremely pragmatic.  Costa coffee themselves also responded to point out that the larger cup has space at the top and if the smaller cup did too that would equal the difference in size AND that the larger cup has two shots of espresso as opposed to one. 


via Paul Hopkinson

As for the engineer's math, we're going to take his word for it and assume that he's solved the mystery of why both cups seem to hold about the same amount of liquid.