Peter Pipes Up: After tearing up a few hundred dollar bills, Peter Thiel addressed Miami Bitcoin 2022. “Bitcoin, he said, ‘is a movement, and it’s a political question whether this movement is going to succeed, or whether the enemies of the movement will succeed in stopping us.’ The last five minutes of his talk were, of course, dedicated to dunking on these enemies, which he called the ‘gerontocracy.’ Warren Buffett, is ‘enemy number one’ and ‘a sort of sociopathic grandpa from Omaha,’ according to Thiel.” Gizmodo: Peter Thiel Shreds $100s and Mocks the Unwashed Masses at Crypto Conference. Related from NYT: Eager to offset a Democratic advantage among so-called dark money groups, wealthy pro-Trump conservatives like Peter Thiel are involved in efforts to wield greater influence outside the traditional party machinery. (There is a financial and political war going on. It’s unclear that both sides know it’s happening.)

+ Michigan Mishugas: “The historic Gretchen Whitmer kidnap plot case has ended with no convictions. The jury acquitted Daniel Harris on all four counts, and Brandon Caserta was acquitted on the one count of kidnapping conspiracy — so both men are free to go. The jury deadlocked on charges against Adam Fox and Barry Croft, so a mistrial was declared for those defendants.” Ugh.

+ It’s Gotta Be the Shoes: Meet the richest person in Taiwan, who built an $11.7 billion fortune by making shoes for brands like Nike and Vans — and started it all on a pig farm. (Not surprising considering it’s a story about making bacon.)

+ Nice Pants: “The world’s oldest-known pants were part of the burial outfit of a warrior now called Turfan Man. He wore the woven wool pants with a poncho that belted around the waist, ankle-high boots, and a wool headband adorned with seashells and bronze discs. The pants’ basic design is strikingly similar to the pants most of us wear today, but closer inspection reveals the level of engineering that went into designing them.” The world’s oldest pants are a 3,000-year-old engineering marvel. Strong in some places and flexible in others, the pants were designed for horseback riding. (These pants still look better than my designer jeans because I failed to hangdry them.)