Fastest Way to the Airport?

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.

This is either the last or the second-to-last Free for ALL Friday of 2024. We’ll be on low power mode after Christmas, but there are so many good things out there that I’ll try to add one more fresh edition. Thanks so much for being here!

Photo by Carlos Coronado on Unsplash

In Online Drone Panic, Conspiracy Thinking Has Gone Mainstream

Authorities are urging calm. But with trust in media and other institutions at all-time lows, fringe theories are winning the day.

On TikTok, one video casts a recent string of mysterious drone sightings in New Jersey as an “#invasion” “coming off the ocean” to target “sensitive infrastructure” like bridges and nuclear plants. On Facebook and X, posts say the sightings are evidence of an Iranian espionage operation or a U.S. military surveillance campaign.

None of the claims are substantiated, and state and federal officials are struggling to calm a wave of online anxiety that has spread to multiple states. But with public trust in mainstream media at a record low, the pipeline from trending content to full-blown conspiracy theory has never been shorter.

More than half of U.S. adults now get their news from social media, according to data from the Pew Research Center, and the voracious demands of the content economy often influence what’s considered newsworthy and how fast stories develop. Over the past month, as authorities have met the growing drone panic with occasional flight restrictions and scant information, online creators and communities have taken over, rushing to fill in the blanks with theories tailored to followers across the political spectrum. (The Washington Post)

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A Weary Joe Biden Heads for the Exit

Still stinging from the election, President Biden is pushing for his final priorities but has largely absented himself from the national conversation about Donald Trump after warning repeatedly that he was a threat to American democracy.

It was a long day in Angola. President Biden had already visited a port facility bracketed with cranes and toured a factory filled with conveyor belts. So by the time he sat down at a large wooden circular table in a warm, stuffy room with African leaders, he put his head in his hand and briefly closed his eyes as the speeches droned on.

Flying across the world would have tired even a president younger than 82. But the point, as he saw it, was that he came. He traveled thousands of miles to highlight a new U.S.-backed railway that could transform the economies of Africa and supply resources for America. He came. He did not have to. He insisted on it and was proud to be the first president to come.

This is the twilight of Mr. Biden’s presidency, the final days of the final chapter of an epic half-century political journey that has had more than its share of twists and turns. Time is catching up with Mr. Biden. He looks a little older and a little slower with each passing day. Aides say he remains plenty sharp in the Situation Room, calling world leaders to broker a cease-fire in Lebanon or deal with the chaos of Syria’s rebellion. But it is hard to imagine that he seriously thought he could do the world’s most stressful job for another four years. (The New York Times)

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Why So Many Americans Prefer Sprawl to Walkable Neighborhoods

Interesting article, but what I really liked was the interactive map just crammed with walkability data.

People do not live according to the preferences of planners. Pew Research Center recently asked 5,079 American adults whether they would prefer to live in a community where the houses are smaller and closer to each other but schools, stores and restaurants are within walking distance — in other words, a 15-minute neighborhood — or where the houses are larger and farther apart but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away — in other words, sprawl.

Most people, it turned out, preferred sprawl. The only demographic groups in which majorities were willing to give up the larger house for the walkable neighborhood were the young, highly educated and Democratic-leaning. (The Washington Post)

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Ulta Beauty Has a New Product to Turn Six Year Olds Into Makeup Shoppers

The Barbie-sized product replicas are designed to entice the next generation of beauty-obsessed shoppers.

In a bid to capture a younger customer than ever, makeup retailer Ulta Beauty Inc. is peddling an alluring new collection: toys.

For $10 a pop, it’s selling plastic mystery balls containing tiny replicas of some of Ulta’s most popular products, including butt polish and wake-up eye gel. They don’t contain any real cosmetics – but they’re convincing fakes.

Kym Robinson’s 10-year-old daughter, Skyla, came home from a playdate with one of the mystery balls. After playing with the toy version, now she’s keen on buying real Caffeine Energizing Hydrogel Eye Patches.

That’s precisely the point. (Bloomberg)

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The 29 Best Memes and Biggest Viral Moments of 2024

From presidential hopefuls to tradwives to epic Olympic fails, this year kept us glued to the internet — for better or for worse.

I'm including this one because it's funny to me that I'm supposedly in media and at least have a passing acquaintance with what's going on, and yet I'd only even heard of 6 of the 29 items on this list of the supposed "biggest" and most viral moments of the year. (Rolling Stone)

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What’s the Fastest Way to the Airport? We Raced in New York, L.A. and Chicago

What we learned from testing an array of ground transportation—even an e-bike—on a busy Friday afternoon.

Debate all you want about how early to get to the airport. Let’s talk about the fastest way to get there.

You probably have your routine down cold if you’re heading from home. Getting there from major city centers—where many of us travel for work and play—is a different matter. Who hasn’t asked a concierge or bellman the quickest way to the airports in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles?

This column is all about helping navigate your travels, so we did our own legwork. Ten WSJ journalists, competitive to the core, set out on a holiday-season Friday to find the fastest way to LaGuardia, O’Hare and LAX. No one was flying anywhere that day but me.

We traveled via every conceivable mode of ground transportation, even an e-bike. (The Wall Street Journal)

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The 26 Best Dishes We Ate Across the U.S. in 2024

From the food writers of the New York Times:

After months of traveling to more than 30 states and eating in hundreds of restaurants, it’s not easy to keep track of all the dishes that crossed our tables. But on the other hand, there are some we couldn’t forget. Whether soups or sweets, a single tasting-menu course or a perfect ham sandwich, these are the bites from 2024 that will linger in our minds well into the new year.

Example, which I may need to try this summer:

Tonnarelli With Green Garlic and Narragansett Clams at Giusto

Newport, R.I.

A deceptively modest variation on spaghetti with clams, this pasta — best enjoyed in spring or summer, on the restaurant’s shaded deck overlooking Newport Harbor — tastes of just three things: green garlic, butter, and clams. But there’s uncommon depth to the dish. The pistachio-green sauce is achieved by cooking the green garlic tops and bottoms separately, and the pasta finishes cooking in a broth of clam juice and dashi that adds flavor without fishiness. Texture is the other play: The tonnarelli (made in-house daily, like all the restaurant’s pastas) is springy, and the tiny local clams are poached until just tender. (The New York Times)