You know how Laverne & Shirley was a spinoff from Happy Days, and The Facts of Life was a spinoff of Diff’rent Strokes? (Do I know my audience or what?)

We’re kind of doing the same thing.

Because if you’ve signed up for the new Next Question by Life Story Magic newsletter, first, I love you. But second, you’re kind of getting the same thing in two places today.

But just today. Next week, it will spin off for good into its own thing. At least that’s the plan.

So if you’d like to be part of that journey, sign up! And if not, no worries. We’ll keep doing Understandably right here.

Get Next Question by Life Story Magic

Key: If you already signed up for the Life Story Magic email but you can’t find it, please let me know by replying here. It might mean I need to fix something. I’ll be eternally grateful!

Tell me about your earliest memory

Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.

I’m Bill Murphy Jr. and this is something new: Next Question by Life Story Magic.

Each week, I’ll pose a question for you to think about, answer, and share here if you like. As an added bonus, you can send it to someone you care about and ask them to answer, too. (If someone did send this to you, sign up here.)

The questions are mostly the go-to ones I’ve learned to ask in about 100 live Life Story Magic interviews since last year.

My plan is to start with 13 weeks. If you stick with it and save and share your answers, you might find you’re well on your way to writing a life story.

How it works:

👉 I’ll give you the question below.
💬 Then I’ll show you some sample answers from people I’ve asked before (always with permission!). Sometimes, I’ll add some fun ones from public figures.
👀 At the end, I’ll give you a link to next week’s question if you’d like a sneak peek. If you answer ahead of time, your response might be featured in next week’s newsletter.

Pretty easy, right? Let’s see if it works as well as I hope. Here’s this week’s question:

I guess technically that’s not a question; it’s more of a prompt.

(Fun fact: When I asked my wife to marry me, I also failed to phrase it as a question. It was more: “I think we should get married. Discuss.”)

But you get the idea.

Back to earliest memories: I like this question/prompt because it’s not something you think about every day.

You might even have to search for the answer. Often, it pulls up fragments — tiny little vignettes that we didn’t understand at the time.

Irony: I don’t usually ask it first. I like to build a bit of rapport. But almost all of the 700+ subscribers here on Day 1 came over from Understandably, so we already have rapport, right?

Loyal readers might recognize that I asked this question in that newsletter several years ago. About 100 readers replied, and the people quoted below said it was OK for me to republish their answers here.

These are edited for length; you can read them all here.

• “I was 3 years old and my parents asked me to help select a name for my soon-to-be younger sister. ... I selected Kimberly for the girl’s name, and that is my sister’s name! I remember feeling very important. 🙂” — Nicole King

• “I was 3 or 4 at my own birthday party in Martinsville, NJ. I remember my mom carrying me downstairs after a nap to join my own party and saying, ‘Look who I’ve got!’” — Arlene Milon

• “My mom took me with her [to] go shopping for shoes. I was around 2 years old. The shop owner had a dog, what I learned later may have been a Norwegian Elkhound. Apparently that dog was the one that started my love of animals. ... I’m sitting here typing this with our two Miniature Australian Shepherds at my feet.” — Paul M.

• “I was a baby and was having a nightmare that the mean ghosts from Casper were sawing my crib to get to me. I remember my mom picking me up out of the crib and hugging me and comforting me.” — Chris DeJohn

• “My siblings and I got dropped off at the local swimming pool ... I would have been about 4. I got bored so I left. Stopped by a local park then started to walk the 7 miles back home. ... An off-duty RCMP officer came upon me about a mile out of town ... I knew not to talk to strangers, so he followed me along the highway until my parents caught up with him. Now in my 60s, I still like to walk and explore new places.” — Melissa Hunter

• “My father was a photographer and took MANY photos when I was young, so it is possible my memories were actually from seeing those photos or at least prompted by them. I wonder how much that happens.” — Darrell Brotherton

• “I grew up in the Louisville, Kentucky area. My first memory is of [trying] to pull the piggy bank off of the top of my dresser to add my money to a Kentucky Derby pool. I was almost 5. The dresser tipped over and I still have a scar on my forehead to show for the fall. Never been a big Derby fan since. :)” — Jackie Harbison

Oh, and I have three interesting ones from public figures:

• “My earliest memory is of telling someone in nursery school that my father was famous, and not quite knowing why.”
  — Reeve Lindbergh Brown, youngest child of Charles Lindbergh.

• “Being at my grandfather’s inauguration. My sister and I were in first grade, and we didn’t quite understand the significance. … We loved balloons and the parade.”
  — Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of one president and granddaughter of another.

• “My earliest memory — I was probably 2 or 3 — is of being in my bedroom, complete with Baby Mickey Mouse bedding, forced to take a nap ... The worst part was not being taken seriously.”
  — Jane Coaston, an opinion writer for the New York Times at the time she shared this. (I love the idea of an opinion columnist complaining that she wasn’t taken seriously as a toddler.)

O.K. Now it’s your turn. What’s your earliest memory?

Click here to comment

(That link should open the comments at the new newsletter; please let me know if it doesn’t! First day and all that.)

Answer it, save it, share it in the comments or with friends and family — and maybe pass this free newsletter to somebody whose first memory you’d be interested to know. (Again, they can sign up here.)

I’ll dive into the comments and share my earliest memory to start us off.

Oh, and here’s a sneak preview of next week’s question: Check it out here, and maybe be included next week!

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Other things worth knowing …

• NYT: Little news trickles out from the besieged city of Oleshky, a frontline wasteland severed by mines and drones from the rest of Russian-occupied Ukraine. Messages from some of the roughly 2,000 civilians who remain — including about 40 children — were shared with the Times: there is no food, no safety, and no escape. “In the autumn, we will definitely die,” one resident wrote this summer. “I am already dying. I am getting weaker with each day.”

• WSJ: Flávio Bolsonaro dealt President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva a bruising first-round defeat Sunday, finishing ahead of the leftist leader and putting Brazil’s right within reach of taking back power in Latin America’s largest nation. Bolsonaro received 47.3% of votes — short of the 50% needed for an outright victory — while da Silva got just 44.8%, leaving the 80-year-old incumbent fighting for his political survival ahead of an October 25 runoff.

• Futurism: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the world is going to have to suffer for the glories of AI. The world “should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology.”

• NPR: People are asking ChatGPT to help them decide how to vote in the midterms.

• WSJ: Here are the new economics of the Strait of Hormuz, where a wartime gold rush has pushed producers to swallow record freight costs just to keep crude moving. Shipowners are reaping some of the best returns the industry has seen in decades — up to $40 million per trip — and the sailors who make the dangerous crossing are being paid like never before.

• NYT/The Athletic: LeBron James is now making four times as much from Polymarket as he is from playing in the NBA — $15 million a year against the $3.9 million he makes for playing for the Philadelphia 76ers. “To be clear, there is no evidence the Philadelphia 76ers had anything to do with the Polymarket agreement or that the deal breaks league rules.”

• NY Post: How does a fashion influencer with no medical or nutrition qualifications bring down a $40 million diet empire with only a phone? Emily Gellis managed to do just that after accusing F-Factor dieting guru Tanya Zuckerbrot of poisoning people while subjecting her to years of relentless online attacks, calling her “the scum of the earth.” After a six-year legal battle, Gellis has now agreed to publicly apologize and pay Zuckerbrot $240,000.

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Time has flown by, and our little startup turned six months old this week.

To celebrate — and also because Father’s Day is a week from Sunday and Life Story Magic is a fantastic gift (and maybe an even better last-minute gift, hint, hint) — I have a quick update and a special offer code.

If you’re not familiar with Life Story Magic, the idea is simple: a professional interviewer does a remote video interview with a parent, grandparent, or other loved one (or with you—lots of people are using it to help record their own stories). You get the full recorded video and transcript, usually within 24 hours.

I’m grateful to some of our first customers who have given me testimonials and permission to share short samples from their interviews.

Like this one, in which a client I really enjoyed interviewing described what it was like for his family to leave the Midwest for California during the Great Depression.

(If you can’t see the video, you probably do not have images enabled!)

Most interviews run 90 to 120 minutes, so there's time to go deep.

This is just one example. You can find more interview excerpts on our new website, and I’ll be sharing a few more in the newsletter over the next several days.

Seriously: Do you have stories like that that kids, grandkids, or the world at large should know? If you’re fortunate enough to have older loved ones, do they have stories like this to tell?

To celebrate, I’m offering a Life Story Magic Anniversary/Father’s Day special for the first 25 customers who use code 6MONTHS at checkout.

You can purchase now and schedule the interview whenever it’s convenient.

Hope to help preserve your story—or a loved one's—soon.

On the other hand ...

When I was in sixth grade, I used to twist myself in knots with a hypothetical:

Would you rather live a shorter but happy, carefree life or a longer life that wasn’t quite so easy?

The instinct is to say the happy one. Who wants to be unhappy? Trading longevity for happiness seemed like a lopsided bargain.

Then again, I’d run around and take the other side of the argument:

What if unhappiness had its own value? What if worrying about things actually made you do things — useful things, meaningful things — that a carefree person wouldn’t bother with?

Didn’t that potentially be its own kind of happiness after all?

I was 11. Welcome to my world.

All these years later, a new study suggests it might not have been a pure hypothetical.

The evolution of worry

In a study published in the Science Bulletin, researchers were trying to solve a puzzle in personality psychology: neuroticism — the tendency toward worry, anxiety, and negative emotion — is consistently associated with worse health outcomes. More mental disorders, more chronic disease, higher mortality.

Yet, from an evolutionary standpoint, a species that didn’t worry would have died out long ago.

Worry is what keeps you from stepping in front of a bus.

So why does something that evolved to help us survive seem to kill us faster?

The answer, the researchers found, is that neuroticism isn’t really one thing. It’s two.

Two kinds of worry

Using a method that maps personality traits across a large population — drawing on health records, brain imaging, genome-wide data, and behavioral surveys covering many thousands of people from the UK Biobank — they identified two distinct dimensions running through neuroticism that work separately.

The first is what most people think of when they hear the word: general emotional distress. Mood instability, feelings of helplessness, and depression.

This dimension is associated with higher rates of mental illness and worse overall well-being.

No surprise there.

The second dimension is what the researchers call ERIS — Emotional Reactivity and Internal Stability.

At one end sit people prone to worry and anxiety. At the other end sit people prone to a kind of simmering fed-up-ness and mood swings.

High-ERIS individuals — the worriers — live significantly longer than people low in neuroticism overall because of what worry tends to make people do.

They go to the doctor more, avoid risky behaviors, and pay attention to diet.

This tracks with research I wrote about recently. Married people appear to have lower cancer rates, in part because spouses tend to notice when something is off and push their partners toward care they might otherwise skip.

So, anxiety works as a low-grade alert system that keeps people from ignoring things they probably shouldn’t ignore.

“Moderately worrying while maintaining emotional stability may indeed be nature’s gift for longevity,” the researchers wrote.

The ancient wisdom version

The study opens with an old Chinese proverb:

“Life springs from sorrow and calamity; death comes from ease and pleasure.”

Which is sort of what I was thinking in sixth grade.

A few caveats: this study is correlational, not a controlled experiment. Also, neuroticism at the clinical level — severe anxiety, chronic rumination — is still associated with worse outcomes.

Also, this research isn’t a license to catastrophize. The point is between productive, risk-aware anxiety and destabilizing emotional chaos. One appears to add years. The other doesn’t.

So, my childhood hypothetical turns out to be harder than it looked.

It’s not a simple trade of years for happiness, but two forces pulling in different directions, and you may not get to choose which one you’re wired for.

My sixth-grade self would have found that deeply unsettling.

But on the other hand …

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Other things worth knowing …

• AP: Trump threatened more strikes on Iran Wednesday as back-and-forth attacks continued to threaten the still-fragile truce. The U.S. military also fired on a tanker trying to transport oil out of Iran, the latest escalation since Tuesday’s retaliatory strikes over the downed helicopter. Iran’s armed forces warned that any repeat of “aggression against the Islamic Republic” would result in “more severe and widespread attacks.”

• CNBC: Inflation hit a three-year high in May, with the Consumer Price Index rising 4.2% year over year — the third consecutive monthly increase — driven almost entirely by the Iran war’s impact on energy prices. Gasoline is up 40.5% from a year ago. Real average hourly earnings fell 0.7% from a year earlier, the biggest drop in more than three years. Markets now expect no Federal Reserve rate cuts at all in 2026.

• CBS News: The Social Security Trustees’ annual report released Tuesday confirms the program’s main retirement fund is on track to run dry by the end of 2032 — at which point benefits would be automatically cut by 22%, reducing the average retiree’s monthly check by roughly $500. The report moved the insolvency date up three months from last year’s projection, partly because the Big Beautiful Bill reduced tax revenues flowing into the program.

• MSNBC: House Speaker Mike Johnson told a Louisiana radio station Monday that Republicans have a plan to "adjust and fix" Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — but won't unveil it until 2027, after the midterms.

• Fox Sports: The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off tomorrow, June 11, with Mexico vs. South Africa at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City — a repeat of the opening match of the 2010 tournament. The U.S. plays its opener against Paraguay on Friday night in Los Angeles. The 48-team, 104-game tournament runs through the final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 19.

• AP: The two crew members of the Army Apache helicopter downed near the Strait of Hormuz were rescued by a Navy sea drone — the first time in U.S. military history an unmanned surface vessel has rescued personnel.

• ScienceDaily: Researchers have confirmed that Stonehenge's six-ton Altar Stone was deliberately transported by Neolithic humans from northeast Scotland — roughly 700 kilometers away — making it the longest known stone transport of any prehistoric monument.

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Thanks for reading. I wrote about some of this at Inc.com. See you in the comments.

I once came across a 73-year-old first person account in The Atlantic.

I got completely sucked in.

It was written by Edward Kennedy (1905-1963), who was an Associated Press correspondent in Europe during World War II, and who was the first reporter to break the story of the German surrender — beating the competition by a full day.

Only, Kennedy wasn’t praised for his big scoop; he was pilloried.

Here’s what happened. The German military surrendered to the Allies on May 7, 1945 at 2:41 a.m., in a schoolhouse in Reims, France, which was part of Eisenhower’s headquarters.

Kennedy was there, along with a dozen other reporters. They’d been allowed to witness the event on one condition: they had to hold the story for a few hours, so the Allies could make their own official announcement first.

As Kennedy told the tale, the U.S. war censors later changed the rules, ordering reporters to withhold the news for 36 more hours, so the Allies could stage a second surrender ceremony in Berlin on May 8.

The point was to ignore the first ceremony at the school house, and make the Soviets’ role more prominent.

The reporters chafed at this. But then, the Allies ordered German radio to announce the end of the war to the German people. Kennedy told military censors that he now considered his obligation to hold the news fulfilled.

“Do as you please,” the chief censor told him. Kennedy managed to call London, and he dictated a short story to his AP coworkers.

By the next morning, May 8, Kennedy’s article was on the front page of every newspaper in America. The free world celebrated, but the weight of the U.S. government came crashing down on him.

He was banned from Europe and fired by the AP. Later, the military investigated and vindicated him, but it was too late for his career.

This article in The Atlantic was his attempt a few years later to give his side of the story.

I had never heard of any of this until I read that 1948 article. I was a bit surprised, because I’ve always been interested in both World War II history, and the history of the media. Heck, I was a reporter for Stars & Stripes for a while.

But no matter what side of this 81-year-old debate you might come down on, what really pulled me in was just the fact that Kennedy got the chance to tell his story.

I believe almost everyone has at least one really interesting story to tell. But, most people never get the chance to tell it.

It’s quite sad, if I let myself think about it. Either time passes before they get the chance, or they don’t have the confidence in their storytelling or writing ability, or they just don’t think anyone would be interested.

But later, their loved ones, at least, really do wish they’d shared.

I’m a member of a parenting Facebook group, for example, and a mom was asking if people thought she should come clean to her college-aged children about her wilder days before she’d had them.

One woman replied with an enthusiastic: Yes! Tell them everything!

She explained that her mother is deceased, and she finds herself craving every piece of information about her, good or bad, momentous or mundane. She would have wanted to know.

Anyway, this is sort of what happened with Kennedy. He wrote the article for The Atlantic, then moved to California and ran some smaller newspapers. He died in 1963, at age 58, when he was hit by a car.

But later, it was his daughter, who was then just 16 when he died, who took up his cause.

She followed in her late father’s footsteps and become a reporter; even worked for the AP for several years. As I gather, she then went to business school and did some other things—but she also got an academic press to publish her father’s memoir in 2012.

That led the then-current head of the Associated Press to write an introduction, apologizing for how his organization had treated Edward Kennedy all those years before.

Maybe I’m sentimental, but I’m sitting here on the couch in my living room in New Jersey, putting the final touches on this newsletter.

And I keep thinking that a man who died years before I was born basically reached up from the grave, and led me to read and share his forgotten account once again.

Nobody’s going to live forever. But, it seems to me that people who share their stories like this at least have a fighting chance to be remembered.

I’ve now done dozens of these interviews myself. And I’ll tell you — the families who receive them are always grateful. Not just for the stories they knew, but for the ones they never would have heard otherwise.

Next week I’ll be sharing something special ahead of Mother’s Day. Stay tuned.

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Other things worth knowing …

• BBC: An 86-year-old French woman whose American husband died in January before her green card application was completed is being detained by ICE in Louisiana. The woman had moved to the U.S. last year after rekindling a 1960s romance; she and her husband had first met during the 1960s, when he was a soldier stationed in Europe, and she a secretary. They had each married, had children, and been widowed before beginning a relationship in 2022. “They handcuffed her hands and feet like she was a dangerous criminal,” her son told a French news outlet.

• KFF Health News: As immigration authorities carry out what President Trump has promised will be the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, several states are passing laws to keep children out of foster care when their detained parents have no family or friends available to take temporary custody of them. The record 73,000 people in detention in January represents an 84% increase compared with one year before; parents of 11,000 children who are U.S. citizens were detained from the beginning of Trump’s term through August.

• USA Today: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has secured a parliamentary majority for his Liberal government, a win he has said will help him deal more effectively with the trade war started by President Trump. It also probably means Carney, who took office with no political experience and has earned global praise for his efforts to band middle-power nations together, won’t have to worry about an election for years.

• CNBC: United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby reportedly floated the idea of a potential tie-up with rival American Airlines to the Trump administration earlier this year, a suggestion that if acted upon, would create the world’s largest airline. “This would be the biggest of all time. I can’t even see the slightest chance that a court would allow it,” said George Hay, a law professor at Cornell University.

• NPR: More than a quarter of private colleges are at risk of closing: 442 of the nation’s 1,700 private, nonprofit four-year colleges and universities, with a combined 670,000 students, are at risk of closing or having to merge within the next 10 years.

• Financial Times: Consumer AI chatbots falter when used to make medical diagnoses, particularly when faced with incomplete information, according to new research highlighting the risks of relying on them as digital doctors. A study found that failure rates exceeded 80% for all models when they needed to perform so-called differential diagnosis — when full patient information was lacking.

• The Guardian: Faced with high demand for GLP-1 drugs, some cities and states that previously covered the cost of weight-loss medication for low-income residents and public employees have now started to restrict or eliminate coverage. Some legislators and healthcare providers argue that dropping coverage might provide short-term relief for governments but will ultimately harm Medicaid recipients’ health, while cities and states will then have to pay for more health problems related to obesity.

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Thanks for reading. See you in the comments.

I said I’d probably close the Founding Customer offer after 10 or so people took me up on it—but we absolutely blew past that in the first couple of hours.

Here’s what’s next:

• I’ll honor a few more Founding/Launch Customer offers ($149), but you need to enter code LAUNCH25 at checkout. The discount will show up on the next screen, after you apply it.

• However, I’m going to have to shut the offer off pretty soon—definitely later today this weekend—so that I don’t completely overextend myself. If the code doesn’t work as expected, that will be why.

• Please don’t share the code; I really want this to be for loyal Understandably readers only!

Important: From here on out, all interviews happen after the holidays.

You can purchase now and give as a gift (let me know in the form after checkout so I can send a digital gift card). But, the actual interview will be scheduled after January 1st, when things calm down.

I won’t keep emailing you about this—but I’ll include an update in Monday’s newsletter.

Again, a giant thank you! This is really validating!

—Bill

Check out Life Story Magic

Questions? Just reply to this email. I’ll answer personally!

Let’s start with two sisters

Long ago, two sisters in Rhode Island had a big falling out. They didn’t talk for years. Eventually they reconciled.

Later, one of the sisters had friends visiting from Montreal, who brought their teenage daughters.

“Cute girls,” she thought. “Same age as my nephew.”

So, she took them to her sister’s house—and, that’s how my parents met.

Imagine if those sisters (my future grandmother and my future great-aunt) hadn’t reconciled, and hadn’t literally brought my Canadian future mom to my American future dad’s doorstep.

I might not exist! You wouldn’t be reading this right now!

Got any good stories?

I learned most of this story last year, when I started doing a series of interviews with my dad about his life—his childhood, what he knows about his family and ancestors, his career, his faith, my mom, my siblings, and more.

It’s been a great experience. It also reminded me, for about the 12 billionth time, that most of us are walking around with amazing stories to share—but no time to tell them.

Or else, sometimes we do tell them, but rarely in a format or a way that makes them easy for others to remember later.

I wonder whether there are similar stories in your family.

Life Story Magic!

I’m sharing this today because I’m launching something I’ve wanted to build for years: a simple way to capture our life stories before they’re lost.

It’s called Life Story Magic. Here’s how it works:

1. I will personally interview someone whose story matters to you—your mom, your dad, your grandmother, a loved one, whoever—even you, yourself—via remote video for 60 minutes at a time (or a bit more if the stories are flowing).

2. I’ll ask the questions that get the stories flowing. (I’ve spent a professional lifetime figuring out how to ask the right questions). We’ll have a fun conversation.

3. Within 5 business days afterward, you’ll get a recording, a short summary, and a full transcript to keep forever.

I’ve done extensive family history projects for families in the past, but frankly at a price point well above what most people can afford. Now, technology has caught up, and I think this should be available to every family.

‘This is that’

Here are the fine details:

• You’re probably wondering about cost. The regular price will eventually be $499 for one interview, with discounts for multi-interview packages. But, I really wanted to start with a bang, and to include a great special offer for my newsletter readers who want to give it a try.

• So, I’m offering a founding customer / newsletter-reader discount: $149 per interview. I’ll probably have to cap this at around the first 10 customers or so, as I expect them to go fast.

• Also, I’ll eventually bring in other interviewers. But for now, I promise to do all of the interviews myself.

If you’ve ever thought that you should sit down and record your parent’s stories, or your grandparent’s, or your own—this is that. Just simpler than you probably imagined.

Wouldn’t this make a great gift?

Wow, I never thought of that! :) Yes, it would make a great gift! Especially if there might be any holidays coming up …

Grab the founding customer rate now, let me know it’s a gift, and I’ll send you a nice gift card so that your loved one can schedule the interview whenever works for them.

What kinds of stories?

Whatever matters to you. Some examples:

• How did your parents (or grandparents) meet?

• What stories did they hear growing up that you’ve never heard?

• Who had the biggest influence on their life—and why?

• What challenges did they overcome that shaped who they are?

• What do they want their grandchildren to know about them?

• What’s the recipe for that amazing thing they make that everyone loves?

• What’s the story they’ve told before, but they really want to make sure is recorded well for posterity?

A one hour interview captures meaningful stories, with a transcript that usually runs roughly the length of a magazine article. Some families may want to book multiple interviews—to go deeper with one person, or to interview several family members.

The stories won’t wait

I’m capping this founding customer offer at about 10 people. I’m telling you first because many of you have been here supporting me for years, and I wanted to thank you and make sure you didn’t miss out.

The stories won’t wait. The people who lived them won’t be here forever—none of us will. Most of us keep thinking “someday I should record this …”

Today is Friday. But, it’s also someday.

Check out Life Story Magic

Get the $149 Deal

Questions? Just reply to this email. I’ll answer personally!

7 other things worth knowing

• Amazon is planning to end its partnership with the U.S. Postal Service by the end of 2026 and expand its own nationwide delivery network according to a report by the Washington Post. The e-commerce giant has been the Postal Service’s largest customer, generating more than $6 billion in annual revenue in 2025, which represents approximately 7.5% of the agency’s yearly revenue. (Yahoo Finance)

• Brian Cole Jr., 30, of Woodbridge, Va., was arrested Thursday morning and charged with planting pipe bombs outside the Democratic and Republican National Committees on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot started building the deadly devices in 2019, federal investigators say. The FBI didn’t provide many details or suggest a motive; a neighbor described him as “very antisocial. Very.” (The New York Post)

• Say Goodbye to the Billable Hour, Thanks to AI: With AI taking over their grunt work, lawyers and other professionals may have to charge for outcomes rather than time spent. (WSJ)

• The AI boom is heralding a new gold rush in the American west. Once home to gold and prospectors, the Nevada desert is now the site of a new kind of expansion: tech datacenters. (The Guardian)

• Why One Man Is Fighting for Our Right to Control Our Garage Door Openers: If companies can modify internet-connected products and charge subscriptions after people have already purchased them, what does it mean to own anything anymore? (NYT)

• Walmart says it sold out of its entire inventory of giant-sized Kraft Mac & Cheese in a 65-inch box the size of a flatscreen TV in in minutes on Black Friday—advertising them at 12:01 a.m. and running out within an hour. Walmart apparently wouldn’t say just how many they sold, but they’d given samples to social media influencers beforehand. (USA Today)

• Travelers wore pajamas to airports in protest of a federal government request for them to dress more nicely when they fly. (The Washington Post)

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Thanks for reading. See you in the comments—or maybe at Life Story Magic?