7 Loopholes That Are Basically Glitches In Everyday Life
It often feels like the deck is stacked against us in this world, which is why it's so nice to hear about the little guy winning on occasion. And who doesn't love stories about underdogs working the system, trying their hardest, and finally rising up to defeat the, uh, overdogs? We're talking about brave souls like ...
Guy Is Forbidden From Building A Garage Door, Builds A Crazy Transforming House Instead
If you're behind on the latest local news from small Belgian villages, you probably haven't heard of Eric Vekemen. When Vekemen retired from a life of shopkeeping, he decided that he was going to store his vehicle in the shop that helped him earn it. All he'd need was a permit from his local council to put in a garage door. This request was promptly denied, the council feeling that a garage door in the middle of a small Belgian village town was a little too gauche. Which is how Vekemen ended up putting the entire front of his shop on a god-damned hinge.
"I hope you choke on your flavorful chocolates and beers, motherfuckers."
Opening and closing his new hinged storefront is a little labor-intensive and requires a couple minutes (and ramps) to do. But because he's well past the age of having to give a shit, he does it, every time, no doubt smiling hugely as he ramps that son of a bitch right up on in there.
Some Amazing Asshole Made Every Day His Birthday To Get Free Starbucks
Many businesses urge their customers to sign up for loyalty programs, offering them various rewards in exchange for their repeat business.
"You'll give me lots of coffee in exchange for lots of money? WHAT A FUCKING AMAZING DEAL."
Starbucks is a notable example, offering a loyalty program that, among other things, gives its customers a free drink on their birthday. A program that one mastermind decided to abuse when he went out and bought 365 Starbucks gift cards, registering a different birthday to each one so that he'd never have to pay for his mocha ever again.
"Happy 281st birthday to you, happy 281st birthday to--."
And OK, that sounds like a fun way to jack a massive international corporation, but according to the baristas who had to deal with this particular genius, he was also apparently a bit of an asshole. Notably, he couldn't just recite the order; he'd demand a pen to mark up his cup with lines illustrating the precise ratio of bean juice, syrup, and barista tears required for his morning joe. The drink that he wouldn't pay for. On this, the day of his not-birth.
Guy Discovers A Magical Broken ATM, Lives Like A Mad King
One night in 2011, Daniel Saunders stumbled upon a golden goose. He realized that the National Australia Bank's ATMs would still dispense bills during late night maintenance even though they were unable to record how much they dispensed and to whom.
You know. The only job an ATM has.
Saunders proceeded to staple that golden goose to his face and greedily suck back golden eggs for months -- we clearly did not think this analogy through -- until he had swindled $1.6 million Australian from the bank. What did he do with his ill-gotten wealth? He lived like a king, of course, eating at high-end restaurants, hiring private jets, and sleeping with only the swankiest of prostitutes. It wasn't to last, as the authorities finally caught wind of what he was doing a few months later, maybe when they noticed the hooker-filled jets left around town. So yeah, he's in jail now. The overdogs, they uh, they don't like losing.
Washington, D.C., Companies Exploit A Loophole To "Gift" Weed
Finally acknowledging the unavoidable truth that people love themselves some weed, in the past few years the government has relaxed marijuana laws around the country. But as is their habit, the government's done this in scattershot, not always rational ways. For example, in Washington, D.C., the free exchange of small amounts of marijuana is legal, but the sale of it isn't. It does not take a legal expert to plot a circuitous path through a loophole that size.
Weed! Helping you enjoy circuitous reasoning since forever.
Which is how a company called HighSpeed ended up delivering juice to their customers for prices ranging from $11 to $150 a bottle. That might seem a little high for juice, even in this thirsty, juice-hip age we live in, until you realize that HighSpeed is throwing in increasingly larger amounts of weed "for free" with each purchase. And they're not the only ones making use of this loophole -- District of C, a similar company, house-calls artwork by deaf artists whenever D.C. residents get the hankering for some dank inspiration. (And by "dank inspiration," we mean "on-demand painting delivery." You know, a business model as old as time itself.)
Canadians Made A New Currency By Cutting Money In Half
A few towns and regions have tried to create local currencies before. The general intent behind it is that because the new currency is only recognized in a small area, it encourages anyone who uses it to support local businesses. It's an almost sensible thing to do, even if it has always struggled with issues like counterfeiting -- most of these homemade currencies can be duplicated with a photocopier. A few locals in Quebec got around this problem by ripping the country's traditional currency in half.
Bless the Canadians, with their love of intensely parochial wackadoo currencies.
The new "currency" is called the demi, and it is worth precisely half the value of the original bill it came from. Half of $20 is worth 10 bucks, and half of a $10 is $5, and so on, which makes a certain amount of sense, even if it seems like just a massive missed opportunity these guys could have used to double their savings. And here's the coolest part: It's not illegal! The Bank of Canada has said as much. They definitely frown upon it, but come on. How bad could that frown be?
The Internet Is Restricted In Cuba, So Citizens Made Their Own
Thanks to a long-running trade embargo and restrictive government policies, most Cubans don't have internet access, living their lives blissfully free of the hot takes and cat memes that so plague the rest of the world. Not knowing the blessing they have, several enterprising Cubans have set out to build their own internet.
Keep at it, guys, the cats are in there somewhere.
Strung together with ethernet cables, Wi-Fi routers, and wishes, this homespun web is of course completely disconnected from the actual internet. Despite that, it still has chat rooms and movies and apparently a World of Warcraft server.
And they haven't stopped there. There's a second, even more secret, and even less online version of the web, made entirely out of web pages downloaded onto external hard drives and ferried back to Havana. A chain of subscribers buys and sells copies of the drives, whose most popular offerings are said to be Vampire Diaries, The 100, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead.
It's sort of like if the internet were laid out on a blanket and sold by a sketchy guy outside the bus station.
The New York Cabbie Who (Theoretically) Won A Free Apartment For Life
Although housing costs are generally everyone's largest bill, New York housing costs are something else entirely. Organ-donation expensive is the rule, not the exception. So what's a hard-working New York citizen who wants to keep their internal organs internal to do? Well, you could be like this one cab driver and game the shit out of some clueless hoteliers to the tune of a free room for life.
Probably not a great room, but still. Manhattan.
The scheme works like this: Certain hotels are subject to a code that states that anyone living there for six months, or who lives there for a day and then requests a six-month lease, is to be considered a permanent tenant. That request for a lease has to be honored, and the tenant cannot be evicted. One brilliantly lucky bastard named Oltimdje Ouattara not only knew this, but managed to find a room that was officially listed for $0 a month. After pulling this stunt and living through the lengthy legal battle that followed, he has apparently snagged himself a free room for all eternity simply because the landlord wasn't paying much attention. Seriously not paying attention: This exact same landlord had lost an almost identical case the previous summer.
"You can't seriously expect us to keep up with all the news we're an active part of, can you?"
Want to try it yourself? Sadly, this particular hotel is no longer accepting reservations, which feels a little like closing the barn door after the cabbie gets a free room for life, but whatever. Overdogs gotta overdog.
Carolyn gets away with murder on Twitter.
Think Nana and Pop-Pop's loving 60-year monogamous relationship is quaint and old-fashioned? First off, sorry for that disturbing image, but we've got some news for you: the monogamous sexual relationship is actually brand new relative to how long humans have been around. Secondly, it's about to get worse from here: monkey sex.
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