Ghost Mail Weekender

Happy Sunday Voornaam,

Move over cats. The internet has a new emotional support creature.
If a cotton ball, a marshmallow, and a Studio Ghibli sidekick had a baby, it would be the shima-enaga - a tiny, floofy bird currently breaking the internet and every tourist in Japan’s collective heart.
Nicknamed “snow fairies” (because obviously), these pint-sized puffballs are a subspecies of long-tailed tit found exclusively in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island and unofficial capital of all things adorable. They’re barely 14 centimetres long, and that’s including a tail that looks like it was glued on by a very enthusiastic child with no concept of proportion.
Despite being famously shy, these living snowballs still manage to command an audience.
So naturally, Japan did what Japan does best and created themed cafés. These are full-on birdwatching cafés, tucked inside the misty forests of Hokkaido where the shima-enaga hang out like tiny, snowy forest landlords.
You buy a ticket, take your seat, and pray they show up. Sometimes they flit past the window in a blur of fluff and tail, sometimes they perch like they’re doing you a favour. Either way, people travel for hours just to get a glimpse. And if they're lucky, they'll leave the café with the rarest souvenir of all: a slightly blurry photo and the knowledge that, for one fleeting moment, a real snow fairy acknowledged their existence.

See what we mean? Here's a little video of them as well.
From snow fairies to canaries, Dominique's column this week is on BNPL firm Klarna and the huge losses they've incurred by allowing Americans to buy burritos (and other ridiculous things) on instalment plans. It's very difficult to repossess a pizza that was eaten last week. But is this a broader indication of the true state of the US consumer economy? Find out here>>>
Read on for a story of pigtails and gunpowder (it's never boring around here), as well as Dominique's Fast Facts themed around words with unusual origins.

Have a great day!

The Finance Ghost (follow on X) | Dominique Olivier (connect on LinkedIn)

Klarna: a canary in the American debt coal mine

A tale of pigtails and gunpowder

TL;DR: Two teenage girls, one bicycle, and a trail of dead Nazis. No, this isn’t the latest Quentin Tarantino blockbuster. This is the true story of Freddie and Truus Oversteegen.
When the Nazis rolled into Holland in May 1940, sisters Freddie and Truus Oversteegen - 14 and 16 at the time - knew they didn’t like the look of this. So they got busy handing out anti-occupation pamphlets and slapping warning signs over propaganda posters. Not your typical after-school activity, but then again, these weren’t exactly typical kids.
Enter: the Dutch resistance. A local commander looked at these two teenage girls with rebellious leanings and thought, “Yes. Assassins.” He asked their mother if she’d let them join the fight. Without knowing exactly what “the fight” entailed, all three women said yes. The next thing you know, Freddie and Truus were the only girls in a seven-person resistance unit called the Haarlem Council of Resistance.
Their new hobbies included sabotage, explosives, and bicycle-based espionage. They learned how to rig bridges with dynamite, how to shoot Nazis, and how to vanish into the scenery like a ghost with pigtails. Freddie, who looked about 12 years old even at 14, could glide past checkpoints without raising suspicion. Together, the sisters delivered documents, moved guns, smuggled children and even burned down a Nazi warehouse just for good measure. And occasionally, they killed people. Not in a vague, spy-movie sort of way. In a very direct, walk-a-Nazi-into-the-woods-and-don’t-let-him-walk-back kind of way.
Their modus operandi was to flirt with lonely SS officers in bars. If their batting eyelashes were effective, they would suggest a romantic walk in the woods. Once the sisters had their clueless victim in a secluded spot, they would shoot him and drop him into a pre-dug grave. They also perfected drive-by shootings from a bicycle. Truus pedalled, while Freddie aimed and fired.
The sisters had their limits, though. When asked to kidnap the children of a senior Nazi officer for a hostage swap, the sisters plainly refused. Even hardened teenage resistance fighters had a line, and for Freddie and Truus, that line was traumatising kids.
After the war, they tried to return to normal life (which, after assassinating Nazis as teenagers, is probably easier said than done). Freddie married, had children, and buried the trauma under nappies and night feeds. Truus became an artist, which is one of the few careers you can go into when your résumé includes “bicycle sniper.”
In 2014 - about 70 years after they hung up their pistols for good - Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte awarded them the Mobilization War Cross. Truus passed away in 2016 at the age of 92. Freddie followed two years later. They didn’t ask to be heroes, but they didn’t wait for someone else to step up either. They just got on their bikes and rode into history.

Dominique's Fast Facts: Words with unusual origins

An assortment of facts that will only take you five minutes to read.

Ostrich. The word ostrich ultimately comes from the Greek strouthion, which comes from their expression for “big sparrow”. It seems the Greeks thought the ostrich was just a really big, weird sparrow. The ancient Greeks also called the ostrich strouthokamelos, which means “camel-sparrow”. Luckily, that one didn’t stick.

Muscle. The word muscle comes from musculus, which literally means “little mouse” (mus means and is related to “mouse”). Apparently, the ancient Romans thought that the movement of a muscle, especially when you flexed your bicep, looked like a mouse was running under your skin.

Salary. The word salary comes from the Latin salarium, meaning “salt money”. In ancient Rome, soldiers were sometimes paid with salt or given money to buy it, as salt was highly valuable. This practice gave rise to the term “salary,” which now refers to regular payment for services.

Quarantine. The word quarantine comes from the Italian quaranta, which means “forty”. During the Black Death in the 14th century, ships arriving in Venice were required to wait for 40 days before disembarking to ensure they were disease-free. This practice was known as “quarantina giorni”.

Sarcasm. The word sarcasm comes from the Greek sarkazein, meaning “to tear flesh like a dog”. It originally referred to a form of wit meant to mock or show contempt by figuratively “tearing” at someone with words.