SortStack #1613 — 2030-11-08

By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.

1. A single steel paperclip $0.02

   Norwegians wore paperclips on their lapels during WWII as a quiet symbol of resistance against the Nazi occupation.

2. A pair of Apple AirPods Pro $249

   AirPods alone generate more revenue than Spotify, Twitter, and Shopify each did when analysts ran the comparison — earbuds as a Fortune 500-scale business.

3. A new MacBook Pro, base model $1.6K

   Apple's first laptop ancestor, the 1989 Macintosh Portable, weighed over seven kilograms and cost the equivalent of more than $16,000 today.

4. An average American funeral with burial $8K

   The funeral industry's pricing was so opaque that US law now requires itemized price lists — caskets alone often carry markups of several hundred percent.

5. The median home in San Francisco $1.3M

   San Francisco is only about 121 square kilometers — smaller than Walt Disney World in Florida — which helps explain the brutal housing math.

6. The largest lottery jackpot ever won, a single-ticket Powerball prize $2B

   The 2022 winner, a California man, took the lump sum of just under a billion dollars — then made headlines buying multiple mansions.

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