Free for ALL Friday!
It's Free for All Friday!
It’s Free for ALL Friday! Each week I keep track of some of the off-the-path things I've found, and work extra-hard to make sure you never hit a paywall, using my own subscriptions, gift links, and other (legal) hocus-pocus.
The White House Marching Orders That Sparked the L.A. Migrant Crackdown
After deportations fell short of President Trump’s campaign promises, federal agents summoned to a meeting in Washington were told to ‘just go out there and arrest illegal aliens.’
Even with the high-profile arrests of suspects by masked immigration agents and the plane loads of migrants swiftly ferried out of the U.S., President Trump was falling short of the number of daily deportations carried out by the Biden administration in its final year.
So in late May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and the architect of the president’s immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up.
Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away.
“Who here thinks they can do it?” Miller said, asking for a show of hands.
ICE agents appeared to follow Miller’s tip.
No, Not That Lee. Pentagon Finds Black Hero to Rechristen Base Long Named for Robert E.
The Army unveiled a list of seven installations that the Trump administration is reverting, sort of, to earlier names venerating Confederate heroes.
In its latest move to undo diversity efforts, the Army announced this week that it had found ways to restore the names of seven installations that long venerated Confederate heroes.
But in the case of Fort Lee in Prince George County, Va., the Pentagon did it with a curious twist.
Rather than restore the name of Gen. Robert E. Lee, the Confederate commander who defended slavery, the Army found Pvt. Fitz Lee, who was Black and fought in the Spanish-American War.
Private Lee, who had kidney disease, died in 1899 within months of being awarded a Medal of Honor.
The base was named for General Lee from 1917 until 2023. But for the past two years, it was named Fort Gregg-Adams for Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Gregg, the first Black man to reach the rank of an Army three-star general, and Lt. Col. Charity Adams Earley, the highest-ranking Black woman to serve as an Army officer in World War II.
How Nuclear War Could Start
This is a kind of enthralling/depressing article, all at the same time. But I got sucked in.
If a nuclear war happens, it could very well start by accident.
A decision to use the most destructive weapons ever created could grow out of human error or a misunderstanding just as easily as a deliberate decision on the part of an aggrieved nation. A faulty computer system could wrongly report incoming missiles, causing a country to retaliate against its suspected attacker. Suspicious activity around nuclear weapons bases could spin a conventional conflict into a nuclear one. Military officers who routinely handle nuclear weapons could mistakenly load them on the wrong vehicle. Any of these scenarios could cause events to spiral out of control.
Such occurrences are not just possible plots for action movies. All of them actually happened and can happen again. Humans are imperfect, so nuclear near-misses and accidents are a fact of life for as long as these weapons exist.
The extreme tensions of the Cold War fortunately never led to nuclear war, but the cocked-pistols deterrence of those decades produced plenty of close calls. Human error was a constant feature then and will remain an endemic risk in the new nuclear age — with more actors, faster and more complex technology, and more points of conflict and tension.
To understand how it could all go wrong, it is useful to look at some examples of how it almost did.
X’s Sales Pitch: Give Us Your Ad Business or We’ll Sue
Elon Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino launched a campaign to strong-arm advertisers back onto the platform.
Late last year, Verizon Communications got an unusual message from a media company that wanted its business: Spend your ad dollars with us or we’ll see you in court.
The threat came from X, the social-media platform that has been struggling to resuscitate its ad business after many corporate advertisers fled over concerns about loosened content-moderation standards following Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase in late 2022.
It worked. Verizon, which hadn’t advertised on X since 2022, pledged to spend at least $10 million this year on the platform, a person familiar with the matter said.
Fashion company Ralph Lauren also agreed to resume buying ads on X after receiving a lawsuit threat, people familiar with the matter said. All told, at least six companies that had either received lawsuit threats or were motivated in part by pressure tactics have struck ad deals with X, according to people familiar with the negotiations. The agreements include both firm ad-spending commitments and nonbinding targets.
The legal threats are part of an extraordinary pressure campaign that Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino launched to boost revenue by cajoling advertisers—including Amazon, Unilever, Pinterest and Lego—to spend money on their platform. X has accused some of them of illegally colluding with one another on an ad boycott. Its tactics have generated a climate of fear on Madison Avenue.
“The strong-arm tactics” are unusual and worrisome for marketers, given Musk’s influence in Washington and “bully pulpit” of 221 million followers, said Greg Paull, president of global growth for MediaSense, a consulting firm that helps match advertisers with ad agencies. “This type of activity may be common on Nanjing Road in China, but absolutely not at all common on Madison Avenue.
Gen Z Doesn’t Want to Start a Bar Tab
To the chagrin of bartenders, many 20-something bargoers prefer to close out and pay after every single drink, no matter how many they might order during an outing.
Late one Saturday night at Bar Lubitsch, a West Hollywood cocktail bar known for its kitschy, Soviet-era décor and frosty vodka drinks, Scott Korinke and Nolan Marks wriggled themselves from the sweat-drenched dance floor and made their way to the bar counter.
Mr. Korinke, 26, ordered a martini for himself and a vodka Red Bull for his friend Mr. Marks, 25. As he fished a Visa credit card out of his green leather wallet, the bartender yelled out a question over the music: “Do you want to start a tab?” Mr. Korinke shook his head no and swiftly closed out.
The pair might order more drinks later on, but the prospect of opening a tab was verboten. “Why leave a credit card with the bar? I don’t know if I’m going to be here that long, so I don’t want to leave a tab open,” Mr. Korinke said, joking that he had “commitment issues.”
His ethos reflects a growing phenomenon among Gen Z bargoers: an aversion to opening bar tabs. Much to the dismay of bartenders, many 20-somethings prefer to close out and pay after every drink, no matter how many beverages they end up ordering.
“These kids never learned the proper way to be a barfly,” one bartender said.
How I Accidentally Inspired a Major Chinese Motion Picture
A decade ago, I wrote a story about transcending cultural boundaries through sports. Now it’s a movie with a very different message.
In December, a friend sent me the trailer for a new Chinese movie called Clash. It’s a sports comedy about a ragtag group of Chinese men who start an American-football team in the southwestern city of Chongqing. With the help of a foreign coach, the Chongqing Dockers learn to block and tackle, build camaraderie, and face off in the league championship against the evil Shanghai team.
Funny, I thought. In 2014, I wrote an article for The New Republic about a ragtag group of Chinese men who’d started an American football team in the southwestern city of Chongqing. With the help of a foreign coach, the Chongqing Dockers learned to block and tackle, built camaraderie, and—yes—faced off in the league championship against the evil Shanghai team.
The movie I saw, which came out in Chinese theaters last month, did not alleviate my concerns. But the film, along with the conversations I had with its producer and director, provided a glimpse into the cultural and political forces that led to Clash’s creation. Indeed, the trajectory of the IP itself—from the original article to the Hollywood screenplays to the final Chinese production—says a lot about how the relationship between the United States and China has evolved, or devolved, over the past decade. What began as a story about transcending cultural boundaries through sports has turned into a symbol of just how little China and the U.S. understand each other—and how little interest they have in trying.
Why Do Dads Watch TV Standing Up?
Everyone knows that fathers love to watch TV standing up. In honor of Father’s Day, comedian Josh Gondelman investigates this cultural mystery, and develops a complete taxonomy of standing dads.
We hold this truth to be self-evident: Dads watch TV while standing up. This tendency has become fodder for memes, numerous comedy videos, and even a commercial for a major streaming service. But why? After an informal survey of dads on Instagram, BlueSky, and Facebook (more of a grandpa platform now, but still), talking to others, and some dubiously scientific data analysis, I’ve drawn numerous conclusions about this phenomenon—and raised several more questions.
Happy No Kings Day to all!!
so much in the news, so much divisiveness, people believe what they want to believe...
https://tinyurl.com/yfecah3d
https://substack.com/@justindeschamps/note/c-124497333?utm_source=feed-email-digest
personally, & I've said this before, I think businesses should be fined, a great deal, for hiring illegals. They must be held responsible in their hiring practices.
There are many, many illegals here who have expired visas.
I believe 'dreamers' should be given a way to become full US citizens.
I also believe if people want to come to the US, they should be proud to be here, they should want to assimilate, learn the language. WAVE THE US FLAG. PLEDGE to the US FLAG. My ancestors, as did many others, came thru Ellis Island, legally, & as quickly as possible learned English & worked to assimilate. Honor the various cultures, at the same time assimilate & love the US. We want people to immigrate here - legally. Those who have immigrated here, legally, resent those who do so illegally. If you ask me how I know this, it's because I talk to them on a regular basis. It started when I was a volunteer for Adult Literacy, working w/ high school dropouts in our community & also those who came to our country & wanted to pass the US Citizenship exam. I heard so many heart-warming/heart-breaking stories of what brought them here/how they got here LEGALLY, & it took them a long time. And now they were eager to pass that exam & when they passed they waved that flag proudly!!!
They also say don't use "undocumented immigrants". Use ILLEGAL. If they don't have documents w/ them, they are undocumented, but they are legal. Again, I talk to them almost daily.