Why Not Your Typical Finance Bro exists (or: a manifesto against slop)

Dear god, make the slop stop. Also, you know, tech, geopolitics, finance, they make the world go round, and that's why I'm writing.

Oct 03, 2025

Once upon a time I went to an investment banking recruiting event in orange velvet pants. The sea of navy blue was monotonous - your blue blues, dark blues, black-hinged blues - and I’ve always had a problem with monotony because it’s in those spaces that mediocrity thrives.

This blog exists because I’m not one of your typical finance bros. I wore gorgeous pants by Sézane, for god’s sake - I was never one of them to begin with. But I find the space interesting and I have a lot to say, moreso than any of their AI-generated weak PowerPoints. So that’s what this Substack is: writing following certain hunches to turn them into pieces testing a concept or thesis, the subject matter centered around the intersections between tech, geopolitics, finance, and culture. I can’t be anything but interdisciplinary in my approach to things both personally and professionally, and I know I’m not alone in this. You know those events where we’re told everything is connected, nothing is siloed, XYZ industry should work with ZYX industry, political scientists and IR people and economists should talk to each other - we’re told to think in terms of ecosystems while someone promotes their book, and afterwards there’s food and drinks? How there’s always lukewarm crab rangoon as the hors d’oeuvres? Where the speakers had interesting things to say for part of the time and completely irrelevant things for the other part? I know I’m not the only one who has come back from those things wondering how to actually work with the interesting part and discard the performance.

Since everyone and their second cousin from Long Island has a podcast and/or Substack now, the time seemed ripe to try. I love writing, this is my creative outlet, and I’m also a huge fan of researching down to the minutiae of things, I am the type of person with way too many tabs open at all times. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s all sorts of content like there’s all sorts of blue - and hey, I like navy blue - all shades of blue happen to suit me well too. Yet there’s a difference between fitting in and standing for something, and a lot of people exist for nothing. A lot of content exists for nothing. That’s how mediocrity mines itself through sheer mass and multiplicity. It becomes overwhelming and slop, and fight me on that if you want to, but that’s the status quo that perpetuates itself to no one’s benefit.

a blurry image of an orange wall — Photo by Johannes Krupinski on Unsplash

In a less indirect way, frankly, I’m tired of AI-generated slop flooding the internet. I’m tired of surface-level analysis cosplaying as insight. I’m tired of complex questions getting steamrolled into LinkedIn wisdom and whatever passes for thought leadership this quarter. The bedrock pillars of modern society - law, order, the money underpinning the whole scheme - deserve better than the performance we’re getting. And I love, love, love these subjects as much as I love, love, love thinking about and now writing about them. It’s my goal to engage with the ideas and people involved in these systems and subjects, as well as with the readers interested in them. I’m also not a fan of jargon or non-sensical production. It is a waste of time, pointless, and indicates castles made out of sand. More strongly, in this house, we believe that opacity in language is a cover and gatekeeping is a shame. If you cannot articulate an idea clearly and simply to then illustrate it in action, you should not be writing about it. Consider this Noam Chomsky quote about understanding, ideas, and explanation:

‘There are lots of things I don’t understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat’s last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I’m interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don’t understand, but (1) and (2) don’t hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven’t a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of “theory” that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b) ... I won’t spell it out.’

Chomsky on understanding tells us he can ask physicist friends to explain quantum theory and they can do it clearly, yet certain theorists write impenetrable work and no one who claims to understand it can explain it either. “That leaves one of two possibilities,” he says, and doesn’t spell out option (b).

I’m interested in the first possibility. The things that can be explained, should be explained, are worth explaining even when they’re difficult. Encore une fois - finance, geopolitics, technology, defense, culture, power, philosophy - all of it. They work hand in hand in ways we cannot discard - and it’s my aim to demonstrate that through a variety of pieces both serialized and singular. For example, the things on balance sheets and the things that will never make it there, and how that impacts valuation when it comes to data. Or the moment you realize weddings are IPOs, EU weapons procurement reveals something deeper about sovereignty, and everything actually does connect - not in the way they say at those events with the crab rangoon, but in ways that matter and have impact in real life.

This is a space for the intersections that are real, not the ones we’re told to perform. Where philosophy meets power meets profit and nobody wants to admit it. Yes, and - you can hold contradictions without needing resolution. I’m unabashed about this: smart writing on smart things doesn’t apologize for being either.

What you’ll find here: Tentatively, the plan is a revolving series of weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly deep-dive posts about geopolitics, tech, and finance. The idea from the debut is to tool around with a dual weekly series: one on a financial crime of the week and one on an ITAR violation of the week - for those unfamiliar, ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) governs the export of defense-related articles and services, and watching who violates it and how reveals more about global power dynamics than most white papers ever will. Interspersed among these weekly takes: bi-weekly research and analytical deep dives on whatever demands attention or is on my mind. Derrida or derivatives, defense tech masculinity or esoteric assets, Chinese manufacturing ecosystems or the financialization of veterinary care - all of these are just a preview of stuff I’ve been working on as I’ve been writing/planning my content out. Anything goes, as long as it’s worth the effort.

Readers will find original analysis that assumes you can handle nuance. My writing aims to translate between worlds for people tired of pretending those worlds don’t speak to each other - or worse, pretending they do while serving lukewarm appetizers and bitter white wine.

Now, on the other hand - what you won’t find here: Stock picks. Career advice. MBA groupthink. Engagement-optimized content. Another voice indistinguishable from the crowd. I am not giving any financial advice, you have been forewarned, though frivolous litigation could serve as a fabulous series of posts (for someone else). Also, I could not shill if my life depended on it, and there are plenty of people who can do that very well with larger followings than myself at the moment as of writing in October 2025.

Who this Substack is for: You had an intellectual phase that never quite ended. You’re curious but skeptical. You understand both cultural references and financial concepts. You read for insight, not validation. You want the interesting part without the performance. You’re bored but not boring. You have read this far and can appreciate the sacred and sardonic blending in systems thinking.

Plans for the set-up of Not Your Typical Finance Bro may change, but the aim won’t: quality over quantity, substance over slop, perpetual curiosity over polished certainty. A small, engaged audience beats a large, indifferent one every time.

On a final note, I decided to pour everything into my work. Since we all know no one is coming to save you, you might as well make it matter. It also never hurts to look good while doing it regardless of the colors you wear, for in a sea of finance bros, I’m not them. Dear reader, welcome! ( I always sign off with one, because I’d otherwise riff on ‘Hello World’).

Not Your Typical Finance Bro

Freedom is slavery: money

Financial crime of the week #1: The bear who broke into a Rolls-Royce

Each week of this fincrime series, I’ll be going over a unique financial crime of some sort to explore the story - in Operation Bear Claw, a wayward bear commits insurance fraud in luxury vehicles

Ani Bruna

Nov 03, 2025

I grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles where one of the most common scams teenagers ran against their Armenian parents involved saying they were going to Lake Arrowhead or Palm Springs for a weekend trip when in fact it was a group trip to Vegas. In retrospect, I suspect everyone either had to be in on it or woefully naive, yet the adolescent scam worked enough that it kept happening. In fact, I hear it still keeps happening - there are lots of cultural reasons for this deception (I maintain that my community really needs to get into surveillance technology as far as I’m concerned) and this dynamic clues us into how here’s a fine line between truths we accept and are willing to entertain even when it seemingly scratch the surface of being a blatant lie.

Much like teens claiming to be going to the mountains when instead they’re piling on mountains of cheap vodka in Caesar’s Palace and their beleaguered parents, insurance systems rely on honesty when they handle claims, which forms the basis of this debut post on an incredibly absurd scam that was caught out. This whole tension between the truth and stretching it is also why the inaugural Financial Crime of the Week post for my website is accordingly an homage to my roots in southern California and the absurdism of such a cultural pathos taken to its stereotypical end.

Crime requires creativity, and today’s topic - Operation Bear Claw - involves a cohort of luxury vehicles, wildlife biologists, misused kitchen instruments, and a large furry costume of the non-sexual kind.

While it does not involve any delicious pastries of the same name, and beyond the un-kinky use of a bear costume in this insurance fraud scheme, this crime is also a cautionary tale about details and why they matter as you’ll see when you read on (such as the number of claws bears have versus the number of prongs on meat claws sold at Williams Sonoma.)

Now, let’s start from the beginning - I mentioned I grew up in LA, and Lake Arrowhead, if you’re unfamiliar, is a small mountain resort town in the San Bernardino Mountains about 90 miles from LA. People often vacation there for weekend trips for reasons unknown to me as I have zero tolerance for bugs, water, or skiing (best I can give you is a hike). Given the region, black bears are often known as a nuisance in the Lake Arrowhead area as they regularly break into cars looking for food (in this economy, who can blame them), but since this happens enough, area locals know not to leave anything edible in their vehicles. Bears in the area are a known problem, and just as known is their dexterity in having learned to open car doors.

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On January 28, 2024, one particularly enterprising bear broke into three luxury vehicles parked in Lake Arrowhead. It appears this bear is a fan of gaudy status-signaling, as it happened to break into one 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost, one 2015 Mercedes G63 AMG, and one 2022 Mercedes E350 for a total claimed amount of damage between the three cars in the amount of $141,839 (which averages out to about 47k per car). Indeed, four people from the Glendale area filed insurance claims for bear damage to their three vehicles on the same day. Now, nothing about the story’s elements per se seemed immediately suspicious. On paper, sure, bears are in the area, the setting made sense, the narrative was plausible enough (though why would you leave the doors open to a hundred and twenty thousand dollar car), but the medium carries the message just as much. Enter the void or rather the video footage of the bear attacks on the luxury vehicles, which is where it got messy…and dear reader, you can view it yourself here too (sourced via AP news)

The video footage of this enterprising bear showed the bear approaching the cars, opening the doors, getting inside, and…pawing at the leather interior. That’s right: apparently a brown bear got into a Rolls-Royce presumably in search of food but instead decided to claw at the interior leather to absolutely destroy it. This enterprising bear almost got away with it, if it hadn’t been for those meddling bear claw skid marks being the incorrect number of claws to begin with.

The crazier part? The four defendants of this crime all filed their claims about the bear break in on the same day. For three different luxury vehicles. With three different insurance companies. One could say they certainly laid their cards bare (sorry, I couldn’t help myself). They almost pulled it off, but if only they had been a little more attentive and cared about patterns.

Something about this coincidence (to say the least) triggered a deeper look by the insurance companies involved who then handed it off to the state investigators. Here’s where it gets interesting - the plot twist is that the scheme worked right up until someone at the California Department of Insurance actually paid attention to the pattern in the video for the supposed bear clawing. When investigators pulled the videos, the problems became obvious. The “bear” was grabbing door handles in ways that didn’t match how bear paws actually work. The gait was wrong. The body positioning inside the vehicles was wrong. This thing moved like a person crouching and reaching around, not like wildlife investigating an enclosed space looking for snacks. So they called in an actual wildlife expert from the state - it turns out the California Department of Fish and Wildlife employs biologists who spend their entire careers studying bear behavior. These are people who can tell you the biomechanics of how a bear opens a cooler versus how a human in a bear suit opens a cooler.

Today I learned all of these were even a thing, but more pressingly, here’s where attention to detail becomes critical (remember when I said that matters?). Real bears leave irregular scratch patterns. Different depths, varied spacing, uneven pressure because bears aren’t precisely dragging their claws across surfaces with systematic intent. They’re just, you know, being bears.

Dear reader, bears have five toes! The claw marks reflected six toes.

I need to emphasize this because it’s important. Someone had gone to a kitchen supply store, purchased meat claws (the kind with six metal prongs designed for shredding pulled pork), squeezed into a bear costume, and decided the best path to $141,839 was filming themselves trashing luxury vehicles. Bears are chaotic and their claw marks should reflect this instead of perfectly matched scratches from a food shredding device.

When investigators executed their search warrants in November 2024, they recovered the pictured bear costume and meat claws. Six metal prongs. Perfect match to the scratch patterns on the vehicle seats.

All four defendants were arrested and charged for insurance fraud and conspiracy.

In my view, the meat claws are what make this case legendary. They aren’t specialized fraud equipment, nor special. They are literal barbecue accessories you can buy on Amazon for $15 with Prime shipping. In fact, Williams-Sonoma has one on sale for $7.99 right now (I’m not a shill, I swear. Though looking at that website while writing this makes me want a steak. Stay away from the grilling accessories subpage if you’re hungry.)

Someone looked at those six metal prongs and thought “close enough to bear claws” and just fully committed to the bit. That’s the kind of confidence that either succeeds spectacularly or fails completely.

Details! Details! The devil is in the details because one more thing - the bear costume choice reveals another detail problem. Scroll up to look at it again - it’s a light brown bear costume, right? California only has black bears. Brown bears went extinct in California in the 1920s. We no longer have cuddly soft grizzly bears even though it’s on the state flag! So this is like filming footage of a penguin waddling around the Mojave Desert and claiming it is native fauna. I was always the picky person for group projects in school but I was right more often than I was wrong, goddamnit - details matter!

Anyways, to this cohort where details amongst other things did not seem to matter, if convicted, each defendant faces years in federal prison for what amounts to a YouTube quality costume and kitchen supplies from Amazon.

The gap between “this might actually work” and “this will definitely not work” turned out to be basic biology and one professional who knew how to count bear toes.

Welcome to the Financial Crime of the Week series and please do not make any ill-advised decisions.