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.
Dead Internet Theory Lives: One Out of Three of You Is a Bot
Sam Altman might be onto something.
Alright, pal, you wanna keep reading? Why don’t you tell me which of these pictures does not have a stop sign in it?
According to CloudFlare, nearly one-third of all internet traffic is now bots. Most of those bots, you won’t ever directly interact with, as they are crawling the web and indexing websites or performing specific tasks—or, increasingly, collecting data to train AI models.
But it’s the bots that you can see that have people like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others questioning (albeit with seemingly zero remorse or consideration of any alternative) whether he and his cohort are destroying the internet.
“Dead internet theory” is the idea that much of the content online is created, interacted with, and fed to us by bots. If you believe the conspiratorial origins of the theory, which is thought to have first cropped up on imageboards around 2021, it’s an effort to control human behavior. If you’re slightly less blackpilled about the whole thing, then perhaps you’re more into the idea that it’s primarily driven by the monetary incentives of the internet, where engagement—no matter how low value it may be—can generate revenue.
Actually, before we go on, here’s a poll prompted by that last story.
AI Is Making Online Dating Even Worse
What happens when users are inundated with machine-generated profiles and pick-up lines?
In June, Vindya Tajeshwar saw a man on Hinge she thought might have potential. Tajeshwar, 27, has a master’s degree and works at a hospital; she is extroverted, easy to talk to, and “can make a conversation out of thin air,” as she put it. The man was a nurse practitioner, which demands at least a master’s degree, so she was surprised that his grammar was iffy. In his typically brief missives, he often misspelled words and mixed up homonyms, asking her, for instance, “what are you’re thoughts on god/higher power.” She figured that maybe he’d be a better conversationalist in person, so she kept their communication going.
Then he surprised her once more. When he asked her what her dream trip to take with a partner would be, she wrote him a detailed message about Iceland, naming some of its unique natural attractions and describing how she’d love to tour the country’s libraries and other sites connected to the Norse and Viking literature she had studied as an undergrad. His reply demonstrated a newfound set of rhetorical skills that sounded so off to Tajeshwar that she felt like she was talking to “a spokesperson.”
Today, people use artificial intelligence to write their grocery lists, college term papers, and résumés; it was only a matter of time before it became part of the search for love.
'Was It All Smoke and Mirrors?': How Adult Children Are Affected by Grey Divorce
Divorce in later life is becoming more common – and scientists are beginning to explore the surprisingly deep impact this can have on adult children and their relationships.
Divorce is greying.
The US has one of the highest divorce rates in the world, even though over the past four decades, it has fallen among younger couples. Instead, middle-aged and older adults have taken over. In fact, adults aged 65 and older are now the only age group in the US with a growing divorce rate. For the over-50s, the rate also rose for decades, but has now stabilised.
Today, roughly 36% of people getting divorced are 50 and older, compared to only 8.7% in 1990. This is known as a "gray divorce."
This tilt towards later-in-life divorce is happening for a mix of reasons, studies suggest. Lives are longer than they used to be, for a start, and older couples may be less willing to put up with unfulfilling marriages than before. Meanwhile, young people are getting married later and have become more selective when choosing a partner. As one researcher puts it, "the United States is progressing toward a system in which marriage is rarer and more stable than it was in the past."
Amid this trend, one aspect of grey divorce is beginning to receive more attention: the surprisingly deep and wide-ranging impact the split can have on adult children – and on their relationships with their parents, especially, their fathers.
David Letterman’s Jimmy Kimmel Reaction: ‘We All See Where This Is Going, Correct?’
The comedian spoke about Kimmel’s suspension from late-night TV at The Atlantic Festival.
The 78-year-old comic legend David Letterman arrived onstage at The Atlantic Festival today carrying a list of presidents he’d mocked in his 33 years as the longest-running late-night comedy host in American history. Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama—he’d made fun of them all (especially, he added with a chuckle, Clinton and Bush II).
“Beating up on these people, rightly or wrongly, accurately or perhaps inaccurately, in the name of comedy—not once were we squeezed by anyone from any governmental agency, let alone the dreaded FCC,” he said. He added, “The institution of the president of the United States ought to be bigger than a guy doing a talk show.”
Letterman was speaking with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg a day after ABC announced it was suspending Jimmy Kimmel Live “indefinitely”—a move that critics attributed to pressure from Brendan Carr, the Donald Trump–appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The incident has ignited concerns over free speech and the willingness of media conglomerates to bow to government threats. “We all see where this is going, correct?” Letterman said. “It’s managed media. And it’s no good, it’s silly, it’s ridiculous, and you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian—a criminal—administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.”
A Self-Driving Car Traffic Jam Is Coming for U.S. Cities
A century ago, cars remade America. Autonomous vehicles could do it again.
A century ago, a deluge of automobiles swept across the United States, upending city life in its wake. Pedestrian deaths surged. Streetcars, unable to navigate the choking traffic, collapsed. Car owners infuriated residents with their klaxons’ ear-splitting awooogah!
Scrambling to accommodate the swarm of motor vehicles, local officials paved over green space, whittled down sidewalks to install parking, and criminalized jaywalking to banish pedestrians from their own streets. Generations of drivers grew accustomed to unfettered dominance of the road. America was remade in the automobile’s image, degrading urban vibrancy and quality of life.
Today, the incipient rise of self-driving cars promises to bring the most tumultuous shift in transportation since cars first rumbled their way into the scene.
While many of the policies governing AV deployments are set by federal and state officials, municipal leaders should not sit on their hands when their public sphere stands on the verge of a tectonic transformation. Cities can — and must — act now to increase the odds that self-driven vehicles enrich urban life rather than undermine it. Even better, doing so will improve current residents’ lives, no matter how long it takes AVs to scale.
Here are a few steps worth considering.
What It’s Really Like to Support a Big Family on a Modest Income in America
More Americans are choosing to put off having children—or not having them at all. The Ivys are an exception. ‘It is hard. But it’s not impossible.’
Brittany Ivy didn’t have much money in the bank. She and her new husband, Michael Ivy, had just paid for their wedding, and they had less than $1,000 in savings left.
But they also hoped for a big family, and wanted to get started. Sure, Brittany was making $10 an hour working a retail job at Home Depot. But Michael’s union construction job paid more than triple that, and he’d owned his own home, a modest two-bedroom outside Cincinnati, for more than a decade.
So the two took the plunge, and in 2012, they welcomed their first baby. Brittany was 20; her husband, 34. The birth was difficult. Her son’s umbilical cord was wrapped around his head, and he had to be extracted from her birth canal, fracturing her pelvis. Still, she was smitten. “Your heart grows three sizes,” she recalls. “I couldn’t stop looking at him.”
The Ivys now have five children, ages 3 to 12. They know they aren’t the norm.
They still live in the two-bedroom. The twins share a room, their youngest sleeps with them in the other, and the boys share a set of bunk beds in the living room. Michael has gotten multiple raises and now makes about $41,000, but it’s still less than he earned in construction.
Her youngest will start kindergarten in two years. But it is only a half-day program.
Still, when first grade begins, Brittany figures she’ll get her chance to go back to work. Something to put her interior design training to use, she hopes, but really, she’s open to anything.
In 2028, she plans to start looking.
Marilyn Hagerty, Whose Olive Garden Review Went Viral, Dies at 99
“The chicken Alfredo ($10.95) was warm and comforting on a cold day,” she wrote from North Dakota. And suddenly the national media made her a celebrity.
Marilyn Hagerty, a food columnist who startled the online world with an earnestly detail-oriented and nonjudgmental appraisal of a North Dakota Olive Garden, and who was startled in turn when the review racked up more than one million page views, bringing her national media attention and a book contract, died on Sept. 16 in Grand Forks, N.D. She was 99.
Her death, in a hospital, was from complications of a stroke, said her son, the journalist James R. Hagerty.
Ms. Hagerty had been writing The Eatbeat, her restaurant column in The Grand Forks Herald, for 26 years when, in early 2012, she filed her report about the opening of the city’s first Olive Garden outlet, part of a local branch of a national Italian restaurant chain where the warm breadsticks never ran out.
The Olive Garden’s menu was enormously popular but also routinely mocked for taking starchy, cheesy liberties with the cuisine. Ms. Hagerty did not engage with that debate. Her descriptions of the restaurant and its food were direct and matter of fact.
“The chicken Alfredo ($10.95) was warm and comforting on a cold day,” she wrote. “The portion was generous. My server was ready with Parmesan cheese.”
Reaction to the review shifted as it became clear that Ms. Hagerty didn’t give a flying breadstick what the cynics thought. Within days, she was in New York, being welcomed by the national media. She gave interviews to “CBS Sunday Morning,” NBC’s “Today” morning program and Anderson Cooper’s syndicated talk show.
Anthony Bourdain’s imprint with Ecco later published a collection of her restaurant columns, “Grand Forks: A History of American Dining in 128 Reviews” (2013).
WOW! What a short memory the liberal media has.
Remember Roseann Barr? How about Piers Morgan, Megyn Kelly, Sharon Osbourne, Tucker Carlson, Gina Carano?? The left was practically dancing in the streets when they were cancelled.
Now, Jimmy Kimmel gets cancelled by the ABC Affiliates who found his rhetoric not in line with their standards and the same group of lefties are apoplectic.
Kimmel is referred to as a comedian, but he is nowhere near funny and people are tired of it.
According to monthly Nielsen figures, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” dropped to just 1.1 million total viewers in August 2025, down 43% from January’s 1.95 million. His August household rating of 0.35 marked the weakest showing of the year.
"In the last year, about five monologues have focused on a subject other than Trump, with the most recent coming on Dec. 11, in which Kimmel provided light-hearted updates on Luigi Mangione, who he said America “thirsted” after."
In the end, ABC has the right to protect their bottom line and their shareholders. Stephen Colbert seems to forget that he's not the chosen one at CBS (even though the Emmy's gave him a pity award), and Kimmel should remember that too. Everyone is replaceable, but these guys seem to think they're Teflon. They're not. And they're not victims either.
- Regarding bots and captchas: before I retired, I had a number of data scientists on my team. I remember a conversation we had where they told me that the real purpose of captchas is to help train AI engines for autonomous vehicles. Think about it -- they never ask you to identify pictures with butterflies or flowers. It's always motorcycles, school buses, crosswalks, traffic lights, etc. Since they told me that, I cannot un-see it when presented with a captcha.
- Regarding families making it on a modest income. I served 26 years in the Air Force, and our son is halfway through his Army career. For military families, the Ivy's experience is not the exception; it's the rule. Their story isn't news for anyone who had a family while wearing the uniform.
- Regarding David Letterman: late night hosts of Dave's generation including Leno, O'Brien, Ferguson, poked fun at everyone and were never mean-spirited. It's curious that the loudest voices are outraged about a host being de-platformed, and not the death of a husband and father who was murdered while expressing his First Amendment rights.