Black Sheep Refresher: Recent Best-Read Posts
If you missed them, here is a rundown of some of the items that seemed to have landed especially well.
Welcome to Black Sheep, a spin‑off of my serialized memoir, SMIRK. If you’re looking for SMIRK, here’s the link to the complete book. Black Sheep is where I now follow similar themes of fraud and folly in other companies, industries, and individuals.
As anyone who keeps opening my Substack emails probably realizes, I care deeply about writing stories people actually want to read. That means hours of real reporting, hunting for fresh angles, and stitching together complex narratives with characters, tragedy, irony, and, when warranted, a little sparkle of comedy.
This summer has been unusually hectic, especially over the past week, and I’ve run out of time to give you a new piece that meets my own standards. I’m still working on it, and it will be out next week.
For now, consider this a “rerun” show: a quick tour through some of my recent best‑read Black Sheep posts and the reactions or new context around them. If you missed any, this is a good moment to catch up and see more about how the pieces landed. Enjoy!
Is The AI Boom A Mass Hallucination?
Sep 28, 2025
I was early to the party in calling out misaligned incentives in the current AI frenzy. While acknowledging the promise of the technology, I took aim at the hype, pointing out that it did not (at that time, and maybe still not yet) deliver enough everyday value to justify its staggering costs. I noted that past mega-innovations like electricity and the internet changed the world because ordinary humans found them useful (notwithstanding the false starts and failures in the development process), and that VCs and tech CEOs, even armed with tens of billions of dollars, can’t force that connection to happen from the top down. Looking through the lens of the current whiplash over “tokenmaxxing” and how to rein in the costs, I think a lot of it still holds up, even if the bubble hasn’t actually popped.
The post has ~2,800 reads so far, and the podcast (basically me just reading the post in one take, possibly with the sounds of my cats making mischief in the background) was downloaded 1,421 times.
The Most Powerful Jacket in Tech
Jan 11, 2026
On a similar theme, I zeroed in on an unlikely market stabilizer: the Nvidia CEO’s leather jacket. As Jensen Huang became the de facto face of the AI boom, his signature garment evolved from personal style into a kind of collective talisman, signaling that someone competent was still at the wheel. I traced how Huang’s optimistic pronouncements, amplified by that visual branding, helped mute critics and keep investors committed even as doubts mounted about AI’s profitability and the sustainability of its infrastructure spending. His own comment that “the whole world would’ve fallen apart” if Nvidia stumbled suggested he saw his confidence as a load-bearing beam for the economy. I haven’t seen as much of Huang in his leather jacket lately, so I’m not sure what that portends for us.
The post has ~2,500 reads so far, and the podcast has 876 downloads.
The Corruption Probe That Just Won’t Quit
Jun 29, 2026
You know that feeling when a mystery novel gets yanked out of your hands mid‑cliffhanger? That’s where I was after the feds dropped their 2025 indictment of Eric Adams. But just when you thought the corruption saga was over, prosecutors pivoted hard: in June 2026, they charged Adams’ former chief of staff, Frank Carone, with taking $120,000 in kickbacks to help Chinese developer Yan Po “Andy” Zhu land a migrant‑housing contract for his Long Island City Microtel. The photos and texts between Carone and Zhu (wine cellar hangs, “Thank you my big guy”) read like a textbook bribery playbook, and the way the case was revived seemed to suggest investigators raided the grab bag and pulled out the theory most likely to survive political interference.
The piece so far has ~1,400 views.
A Ponzi Scheme On the Prairie
March 1, 2026
A Missouri man, Josh Link, allegedly sweet-talked $220 million out of 2,000-plus investors by selling them stakes in cattle that, in large part, didn't exist. The scheme was called Agridime, which claimed to offer sustainable beef, farm-to-table vibes, and returns of 15–32%. Prosecutors allege that it actually amounted to a ghost herd of mostly fictional steers, conjured from recycled ear-tag numbers. When regulators first started taking action, Link stood his ground, but he eventually bolted, leaving behind his wife, co-defendant Tia, to face the indictment alone. I wrote this as a three-part series, all published in March 2026. By coincidence, Link was caught at LAX by US Customs agents just hours after I published Part II, seemingly mid-journey to somewhere that wasn’t a federal courtroom. I’ve been continuing to follow the case after finishing the series, as it yields more developments.
Across Part I, Part II, and Part III, the posts collectively got ~6,200 reads. The podcasts, collectively, were downloaded ~1,100 times.
The Billionaire Who’s Blowing Himself Up
Jun 21, 2026
I used HBO’s “Silicon Valley” as a frame to analyze Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, tracing how the founder’s journey from scrappy Richard Hendricks–type to Gavin Belson–adjacent tyrant tracks with the company’s implosion under AI missteps and mass layoffs. The piece leans into the irony that a company once known for utopian perks and intellectual freedom now has employees calling it “the gulag,” while leadership responds to despair with… more snacks and a hackathon nobody asked for. I argue that Zuck’s real problem isn’t his eccentric hobbies (sword-forging, cattle-slaughtering, whatever), but the yes‑man echo chamber that convinces him he can jiu‑jitsu for two hours a day and still run a 70,000‑person tech empire without consequences. Spoiler: he can’t.
The post has ~1,600 reads so far, and the podcast has been downloaded around 147 times.
The Highest-Altitude Scam
April 12, 2026
Every spring, the world’s highest peak becomes a traffic jam of amateurs chasing bragging rights, and an entire ecosystem of guides, insurers, and medevac operators has learned to monetize their oxygen-starved poor judgment. I dug into this after a 2026 headline landed in my Google alerts: Nepali authorities had charged 32 people in a $20 million scheme involving staged helicopter rescues—and, in some cases, climbers allegedly poisoned with baking soda, uncooked chicken, or rat droppings to trigger fake emergencies. The real origin story, though, goes back to 2018, when a local journalist tracked down the ins and outs of the con through very literal boots-on-the-ground reporting. The moral ambiguity is especially interesting here; do you really feel sorry for Everest hikers who get scammed if they did no basic research at all before showing up to climb the mountain?
The piece got ~1,800 views, and a preview for the podcast was downloaded 107 times.
A Long-Overdue Checkup On “Zack Morris”
Jun 14, 2026
Back in 2024, I wrote about how a crew of penny-stock pumpers led by “Zack Morris” (real name Edward Constantinescu) managed to “beat the Feds,” winning dismissal of a $114 million fraud indictment just weeks before trial. I was skeptical that it would hold on appeal, and sure enough, the Fifth Circuit revived the charges in late 2025. Since then, things have only gotten weirder: the original judge recused himself, Constantinescu’s lawyers dropped him, and he started publicly taunting prosecutors online: posting photos of weapons (and, yes, a Power Rangers sword), doxxing government staff, and even offering a $5,000 bounty to his followers for information about them. Then he fled, first to Mexico and now, by his own X bio, to Romania, where he’s been posting smug videos about how much he loves his “mother country.” A new trial date is set for May 3, 2027, but whether Constantinescu ever shows up (and whether Romanian citizenship shields him from extradition) remains to be seen.
Across both “Zack Morris” posts, there were ~5,800 reads and ~450 podcast downloads.
A Fourth of July Flameout
Jul 5, 2026
Once again, I got hooked by an unfolding drama in my home state of Missouri with this post. AM Pyrotechnics, run by fireworks enthusiast Aaron Mayfield, went from "fell in love with fireworks as a toddler" to perennial bankruptcy filer after two fatal warehouse explosions, in 2018 and again just before Thanksgiving 2025, left employees dead and the company drowning in OSHA penalties and insurance woes. I traced how the firm's second Chapter 11 filing in early 2026 set off a domino effect of canceled shows across Missouri and Arkansas, angry local organizers, and an Arkansas attorney general investigation, even as Mayfield insisted he was still trying to pull off shows and sell the business.
The post currently has about 1,400 views, and the podcast has been downloaded 58 times.