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. (If you do find links that don’t work, let me know!)
The Longest Active Championship Droughts in Sports After Brewers Win World Series
Apparently, 2026 is the year of snapping long championship droughts.
In June, the New York Knicks won their first title in 53 years after defeating the San Antonio Spurs in the 2026 NBA Finals. Four months later, the Milwaukee Brewers snapped a 57-year championship drought by beating the Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series.
Winning a title is the goal for every professional team. Every addition to and subtraction from the roster is made with a long-term vision in mind. Even an intentional teardown is executed with the idea of building up a future contender.
But as the Knicks and Brewers know full well, a championship can be agonizingly elusive. For some organizations, the dream of winning a title has never been more than exactly that.
In the wake of the Knicks’ and Brewers’ wins, the following teams now have the longest championship droughts across all of the major U.S. sports.
Link: Bleacher Report
Old Enough for a Driver’s License? They’re in No Rush.
Gen Z teenagers are no longer racing toward this rite of passage. What’s the hurry, with so much of their lives happening online?
The video game Grand Theft Auto allows players to steal vehicles, blow up factories and race monster trucks. That all sounds exciting, but Korey Batey, a driving instructor in Detroit, has been using the game to show teenagers how to parallel park.
“Now we turn that wheel to the left, just like that, and back it up, nice and easy,” Batey, 37, says in a TikTok video of himself guiding a black sedan into a tight parking spot. In another, he traverses the game’s roadways to point out the difference between stop and yield signs.
A few decades ago, a driver’s license was just about the most exciting thing you could offer a teenager. That little card offered a tantalizing taste of freedom. Passing the road test was a rite of passage for young adults eager to live life on their own terms; failing was a plot point in coming-of-age movies like “License to Drive” (1988, starring Coreys Haim and Feldman) and “Clueless” (1995).
These days, instructors like Batey have to go to great lengths — like invoking video games — to pique young people’s interest in getting behind the wheel.
Just over a quarter of American 16-year-olds had their driver’s licenses in 2024, a 20-point drop from the early 1980s, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
For Batey, the TikTok videos are just a hook. He teaches hundreds of behind-the-wheel lessons each year to students who are mostly ages 18 to 25. In Michigan, teenagers are eligible to get a learner’s license at 14.
Link: New York Times
Where Do Trends Come From Now?
There’s long been a little voice in our heads telling us “It’s time to go shopping.” But in the age of hyper-optimized algorithms, who’s doing the talking?
A few years ago, during a fit of self-actualization, I got my ears pierced. I don’t have any tattoos, and I’ve never even dyed my hair, so the decision to pierce my ears felt both exciting and personally out of the ordinary. I still don’t quite understand why I did it. Men have been piercing their ears for centuries, but I suspect, as with so many things we guys also do, particularly where clothes and accessories are concerned, my decision had something to do with tiny hoops being trendy.
Trends are as old as civilization itself, but the speed at which they move in the age of TikTok and AI-driven algorithms has never been faster. Likewise, with a good portion of the global population on some kind of social media, a trend’s reach has never been farther. These changes—exemplified by my sudden, inexplicable desire for hoops—begged a couple of questions: Where do trends come from now? And how do we know when they’ve run their course? For answers, I turned to the people who study trends for a living.
Nick Paget, the senior menswear strategist at trend forecasting company WGSN, believes that “it will be increasingly hard to look back on this decade and say, ‘Ooh, it was all about this kind of styling, this look’ in the way that we used to be able to say about the ’90s, ’80s, ’70s or ’60s.” Nowadays, it’s like every era-based trend has been chucked into a blender and blitzed into oblivion. Institutional tastemakers, including high-fashion designers and magazines such as this one, seemingly have less say than ever.
To understand what consumers want and where they are headed, WGSN has its own methods of analyzing data. According to Paget, the company uses TikTok metrics to monitor various algorithms (a platform they aptly call “TikTok Dashboard”) to get a more holistic view of what users are interested in. “We neutralize the algorithm bias that someone might have if they just use their own account,” he explains. Via this mechanism, they can effectively watch a fashion trend be born on the runway and transform, grow, and die across social platforms.
Link: GQ
The Brutal Harvard Class That Suddenly Everyone Wants to Take
It’s an ungodly amount of reading and no easy A. So why are freshmen lining up to get into Humanities 10?
Those who see the humanities, heavy coursework and value of a Harvard education as gravely imperiled can take heart in the phenomenon that is Humanities 10.
On a Tuesday morning in October, Samantha Matherne paced as she marked up on a white board explaining the philosophical underpinnings of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” with segues into Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant.
The philosophy professor posed big questions to the 90 students gathered in Boylston Hall: “Why did Austen create such an unlikable heroine?” she asked. “Why read novels at all?” And finally, as the 75-minute lecture ended, “What will become of Emma—and what will become of you?”
The students burst into applause.
Hum 10, as it’s commonly known, has become the surprise hit of Harvard’s academic lineup and something of a campus institution. Demand to get into the class has surged, fueled by word-of-mouth from “Hum Alums” who talk it up on social media. Applications (essays required) shot up 40% this fall with 180 incoming freshmen vying for 90 spots.
It’s a fever that even the professors are struggling to explain.
It’s all distinctly old school. Hotly contested terms like “Western Civ,” “Great Books” and “the canon” appear nowhere in the course description. But the curriculum begins with “The Odyssey,” travels forward in time to James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and then backward to end with “The Iliad.” In between are assignments on Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Baldwin, Dante and Plato.
“I did have the sense that a lot of students feel that the culture at large is not hospitable to deep reading, deep thinking or deep engagement with writing,” said David Elmer, a classics professor and one of Hum 10’s co-leads. “Whether that’s because of AI encroaching on their autonomy as a writer or thinker, I honestly don’t know.”
Link: Wall Street Journal
Searching for Jobs, Gen Z Feels Like It’s Staring Into ‘The Void’
Hundreds of applications later, even being rejected by an actual human being counts as a victory.
A 22-year-old with an undergraduate degree in biology has applied for 511 jobs and counting. She was recently rejected from a role at Whole Foods after being “interviewed” by a chatbot named Sage.
A 23-year-old applying for administrative jobs in Texas keeps being asked to videotape himself, alone in his apartment, answering questions about his qualifications.
A 23-year-old in Kansas started applying for jobs at fast-food joints and at movie theaters after failing to find work as a paralegal. He answered the phone for one job interview and realized he was speaking to an A.I. agent.
The New York Times recently asked members of Gen Z to write to us about what it feels like to be searching for a job right now. They described a process that is lonely, opaque and impersonal, in which it is hard to tell whether one is being rejected by a hiring manager or an A.I. screener.
The problem is not just that hiring has slowed across the labor market, or that the specter of A.I. is threatening entry-level positions, they said. It was that they could not get a real, live human being to speak to them. Ever. About anything.
“You can’t do the classic, ‘Give them a firm handshake and say you’re ready to start on Monday,’” said Imani Stone-Thompson, 29, who lives in Rochester, N.Y. “That hasn’t worked for a really long time.”
She echoed what many people said: There are no phone numbers to call, no publicly accessible hiring managers to charm with a personalized email. Instead, there is what feels like a wall of tech that needs to be pierced in order to reach a human being.
Link: New York Times
How Long Does It Take to Save Up for a Starter Home? Twice as Long as It Did in 2019
Mortgage rates topping 7% is the latest sign of how hard it has gotten to buy a first house, with aspiring owners already facing sky-high prices. A new analysis out Thursday shines a light on yet another growing obstacle: the amount needed to close a home loan.
“Over the last seven years, the time to save up that down payment and closing costs has doubled,” said Mike Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending, a research nonprofit that promotes economic opportunity. The report was released by the center’s Julian Bond Institute.
Since 2019, the last time the center made the same calculation, home prices have shot up, inflation spiked and has remained stubbornly high, and the rising cost of food, gas, healthcare and more has strained family budgets. Closing costs on a home loan have also ticked up, driven in part by rising homeowners insurance.
Amid all this, renters’ incomes have not kept pace, and personal savings rates have dropped.
Today, the center calculates that for a median-income renter household, it would take a “staggering 16 years” to save up a down payment and closing costs for a starter home. That’s twice as long as in 2019. And it would take even more time — 21 years — for a median-income Black renter household.
Link: NPR
How Bolsonaro Fled Brazil: Decoys, a Private Jet and a Friend in the White House
After losing Brazil’s election, Flávio Bolsonaro fled to Miami in an elaborate operation aided by Trump’s inner circle and Argentina’s president
Less than 24 hours after losing Brazil’s presidential election, Flávio Bolsonaro appeared to vanish into a convoy of four dark cars.
After pulling away from his home in Brasília on Monday evening, the vehicles split in different directions, leaving journalists and authorities scrambling to determine which one carried Bolsonaro. By the next afternoon, the former presidential candidate’s allies were telling reporters he had already reached Florida.
As Brazilian and international outlets reported that Bolsonaro had left the country, he was still in Brazil, while a private jet waited for him across the border in Argentina. At 12:21 a.m. Wednesday, the Gulfstream G400 took off from Puerto Iguazú and whisked him to Ecuador and then Miami, where his entry was facilitated by Trump allies his family spent years cultivating.
The getaway—which relied heavily on deception and decoys—sparked a global guessing game that left even some of Bolsonaro’s closest allies in Washington and Brazil in the dark about his whereabouts.
After Bolsonaro stepped off the plane in Miami on Wednesday morning wearing a navy polo shirt and a backpack, uniformed officers used umbrellas to shield him and his family from cameras. Their arrival followed an extraordinary effort by a small circle of influential Trump allies, senior U.S. officials and Argentine President Javier Milei to help him fly to the U.S. and secure entry, despite a Brazilian court order barring Bolsonaro from leaving the country.
Link: Wall Street Journal
Trump Fired Him. The ‘DEI Watchlist’ Shamed Him. Then Came 500 Job Rejections.
Efforts to purge the government of diversity, equity and inclusion programs have taken a major toll on Black workers who now struggle to find comparable jobs.
On his 368th day without a job, Dia Harris woke at 8:30, slipped a coffee pod into his Keurig and checked his iPad to see how many more rejections had come in overnight.
There were two automated messages from “Meta Careers,” thanking him for applying to be a program manager. “Our recruiting team will contact you if your qualifications are a strong match,” Harris read. By his count, those were the 560th and 561st roles he’d sought since getting fired from the federal government.
After he showered, he found another message waiting: this one from the Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization that combats suicide among LGBTQ+ youth. Harris, 53, recalled thinking that the Trevor Project’s “chief people officer” was the rare posting that felt like something he would be good at and actually wanted to do.
“While your qualifications and experience are truly impressive, they don’t fully align ...,” Harris read now, and he deleted the latest rejection unfinished.
Harris was the first chief equity officer for the Administration for Children and Families, or ACF, a large agency in the Department of Health and Human Services that helps vulnerable Americans with foster care, home energy needs and early education. He was among more than 200 employees targeted for dismissal by DOGE after President Trump issued an order to rid the government of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which he declared were divisive and destructive and “would have ruined our country.”
Harris’s job search was made harder by his membership in an even smaller group: He’d been named, with 92 others — two-thirds of them Black — on a public website called the “DEI Watchlist.” Run by a little-known conservative group with ties to the Heritage Foundation, the site claimed to expose “behind-the-scenes bureaucrats who push divisive DEI agendas that undermine merit, fairness, and accountability.”
Of the 43 federal employees named on the watch list who lost or left their government jobs, 2 out of 3 remain unemployed as of this month, a Post analysis of their social media profiles and postings shows.
“If the Post’s reporting that the 2/3rds of the DEI staffers on the list can’t find work is accurate, we cannot overstate our joy that trafficking in anti-white bigotry now makes you unemployable,” Tom Jones, the president of the American Accountability Foundation, wrote in an email. “Our only regret about the watchlist is that we didn’t have the time or resources to profile more left wing woke bureaucrats.”
Link: Washington Post
Inside the Trump DOJ’s Pressure Campaign on One Immigration Judge
Karen Donoso Stevens offers a rare firsthand look at the administration’s campaign to transform the immigration court system.
THE JUDGE HAD JUST CALLED COURT TO ORDER on that winter morning, and already, a dozen attorneys waited on her TV screen, each with an urgent request. Their clients, all locked up and facing deportation, needed hearing dates scheduled or bond requests considered. As always, the judge had prepared for every case days earlier, because almost nothing happened in Courtroom 15 that she didn’t anticipate.
Then the door behind her swung open, thudding against the wall. In walked her supervisor.
“Are you on the record?” he asked, questioning whether she was in session.
Karen Donoso Stevens was in session, and she was certain he knew it. The judge held up a finger — wait — as she announced a recess inside the Annandale Immigration Court.
A Homeland Security attorney at the prosecution table watched in silence, as did her legal assistant.
She drew a long breath, then stood in the black robe she’d worn for nearly a decade, its cloth fraying at the elbow.
Here we go, the judge thought, certain she was about to be fired.
No cog in President Trump’s effort to expel millions of “illegal aliens” was more essential — and less familiar to the public — than the immigration courts that decide who stays and who goes.
The sprawling system doesn’t operate like most courts. It exists within the Justice Department, which is overseen by the attorney general and, ultimately, the president. Nevertheless, it is obligated to afford migrants due process and manage cases according to the law, nothing else.
And yet, in the first year of Trump’s second term, the Justice Department fired some 100 of the country’s roughly 700 immigration judges and began to replace them with what the administration called “deportation judges.”
Link: Washington Post
Backup: https://archive.is/KF8Lv#selection-709.0-725.2
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend. See you in the comments!