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.
A Beloved Clothing Store Closed. A Customer Bought All 4,500 Items.
Everything in the shop appeared to have been abandoned. A devoted customer took it all home and started selling the items herself.
“Everything Must Go,” said the sign on the door of Rags to Riches in Cordele, Ga., and Vicky Szuflita could not resist taking a look inside.
The women’s clothing store contained multitudes — shoulder pads, vintage brooches, old denim faded by years of sunlight shining through the window and floral A-line skirts that fit just so. Also, gowns. “There were so many sequins,” Ms. Szuflita said. “I wanted all of them.”
The store, however, kept just a few regular hours and soon shut its doors permanently. The clothes remained, and many months later, she taped a handwritten request to the door. Could she somehow get inside and buy just a few more things?
Another few months went by before the new owner of the building replied. He seemed to have little interest in retail or the inventory that the previous owners had inexplicably left behind.
Eventually, he did open a line of communication, and Ms. Szuflita’s hankering for one last shot at the racks suddenly evolved. He let her take a look inside, and last year, she summoned up the nerve to make an ask: What if everything did in fact go? Could she take the entire contents of the store off his hands?
The Missing Kayaker
What happened to Ryan Borgwardt?
Emily told the detective that Ryan had left their home in Watertown, about an hour from Big Green Lake, at around 4:45 p.m. the previous afternoon. He’d driven the family minivan to a friend’s house to pick up wood pellets for his stove. Before setting off, he’d mentioned that he might drop the kayak in the water somewhere on his way home, and attached an enclosed trailer with the kayak. He’d told Emily over the weekend that he wanted to fish on Big Green Lake, which would be roughly on his way.
Emily told the detective she’d texted with Ryan the previous evening. She forwarded screenshots of their exchange.
At 10:12 p.m., Emily had written, “Night. Love you.” About 15 minutes later, she’d texted again, telling him that their older son, 17, was spending the night at a friend’s house.
Five minutes later, Ryan texted back: “I may have snuck out on a lake.”
Emily: “That would have been nice to know...I was beginning to wonder why you weren’t home.”
Ryan apologized, but then added: “Temperature is perfect.”
Emily: “Nothing new. I should be used to it by now. So many nights I have no idea where you are when it’s late.”
Ryan: “The meteor shower is awesome in the dark.”
Emily asked Ryan to turn on his location-sharing in the Life360 app, which he did.
Emily: “Again, no communication. Would have been nice to know.”
Ryan: “I’ll work on this communication thing.”
Emily: “It sucks going to bed not having any idea where you are. Just saying.”
Ryan told Emily he’d forgotten his paddle and was instead using a fishing net.
Emily: “No paddle is dumb.”
Ryan: “I love you...goodnight.”
Emily: “Night. Love you too. Be safe.”
Ryan: “I’ll start heading back to shore soon.”
Emily: “K.”
After her last text, at 10:49 p.m., Emily said she fell asleep. When she woke around 5 a.m., Ryan still wasn’t home.
Emily texted him at 5:12 a.m.: “Where are you?????”
Then, at 5:16 a.m.: “Babe?????”
He Shared His Weight Loss Online. Then a Million Strangers Chimed In.
Ethan Benard is halfway to his goal of dropping at least half of his 660 pounds. Does it help or hurt that the world is watching him do it?
Ethan Benard is a big guy. Big, like big: 6-foot-5, with a springy shock of red hair that adds another inch. But also big, like — listen, if I were writing this totally without Ethan’s input, I might leave it as “big.” Or “bigger,” i.e. the kind of vague descriptor that allows room for the idea that there’s always someone else who might be the biggest; that human bodies are a beautiful spectrum.
But the word Ethan prefers is “fat.” He tells me that it’s not a matter of self-deprecation, though people often assume it is (Oh, Ethan, don’t call yourself fat!), but a matter of fact: He is fat. He would like to be less fat. He started at 660 pounds; his goal is to weigh about half that. It’s that simple.
I started following Ethan on TikTok over the summer. Social media algorithms are curious and mystical, but somehow late at night mine had decided that what I needed to see was a fat 26-year-old former gamer from western Michigan trying to lose weight. I needed to see him meticulously weigh his food. Chase his step counts. Set goals that he labeled “Ethan Benard Guarantees.” I couldn’t stop watching Ethan Benard, and neither, it seemed, could a lot of other people. He had about 15,000 followers when I first became aware of him, and now, across several platforms, he has well over a million.
He was, as he frequently affirmed, grateful and lucky.
But I had also heard Ethan confess that none of this was good for his mental health.
FBI Warns of Criminals Posing as ICE, Urges Agents to ID Themselves
In a bulletin to law enforcement agencies, the FBI said criminal impersonators are exploiting ICE’s image and urged nationwide coordination to distinguish real operations from fakes.
Criminals posing as U.S. immigration officers have carried out robberies, kidnappings, and sexual assaults in several states, warns a law enforcement bulletin issued last month by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
First reported by WIRED, the bulletin cites five 2025 incidents involving fake immigration officers and says criminals are using Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s heightened profile to target vulnerable communities, making it harder for Americans to distinguish between lawful officers and imposters while eroding trust in law enforcement.
On August 7, according to the FBI, three men in black vests entered a New York restaurant claiming to be ICE agents. Inside, they tied a worker’s hands and pulled a garbage bag over the person’s head. Another, believing the burglars’ story, surrendered themselves, only to be kicked to the ground and tied up as the intruders robbed an ATM.
Other cases cited by its advisory span kidnappings, street crime, and sexual violence.
In Brooklyn, it alleges, a man told a woman he was an immigration officer and “directed [her] to a nearby stairwell,” where he punched her, tried to rape her, and stole her phone before police caught him.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, it claims, a man “entered [a] motel room and threatened to deport the woman if she did not have sex with him,” telling her he was a sworn officer. He showed her a business card with a badge, police said.
Federal rules require immigration officers to identify themselves and state the reason for an arrest “as soon as it is practical and safe to do so.” The standard has not changed since it was codified in the 1990s, yet advocates say it is increasingly ignored.
Miss Universe Contestants Walk Out After Organizer Berates Miss Mexico
I love this story, as it’s one of the times when a group of people who are told they have no power suddenly and effectively show that in fact, they have all of the power.
Several contestants have walked out of a Miss Universe event after an official from host nation Thailand publicly berated Miss Mexico in a tense confrontation.
At a pre-pageant ceremony, Miss Universe Thailand director Nawat Itsaragrisil told off Fatima Bosch in front of dozens of contestants for failing to post promotional content.
When she objected, Mr Nawat called security and threatened to disqualify those supporting her. Ms Bosch then left the room and others joined her in solidarity.
Among those to walk out on Tuesday was reigning Miss Universe Victoria Kjaer Theilvig of Denmark.
“This is about women’s rights,” she said as she left the event. “This is not how things should be handled. To trash another girl is beyond disrespectful... That’s why I’m taking my coat and I’m walking out.”
Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It’s Hiring High-School Grads.
Tech company offers 22 teens a chance to skip college for its fellowship, which includes a four-week seminar on Western civilization.
At first, the idea of skipping college to take a fellowship for Palantir Technologies seemed preposterous to Matteo Zanini. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“College is broken,” one Palantir post said. “Admissions are based on flawed criteria. Meritocracy and excellence are no longer the pursuits of educational institutions,” it said. The fellowship offered a path for high-school students to work full time at the company.
After deciding to apply, Zanini found out he got the fellowship at around the same time he learned of his admission to Brown University. Brown wouldn’t allow him to defer and he had also landed a full-ride scholarship through the Department of Defense.
“No one said to do the fellowship,” said Zanini, who turned 18 in September. “All of my friends, my teachers, my college counselor, it was a unanimous no.” His parents left the decision to him, and he decided to go with Palantir.
Zanini is one of more than 500 high-school graduates who applied for Palantir’s “Meritocracy Fellowship”—an experiment launched under Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s thesis that existing American universities are no longer reliable or necessary for training good workers.
The fellowship kicked off with a four-week seminar with more than two dozen speakers. Each week had a theme: the foundations of the West, U.S. history and its unique culture, movements within America, and case studies of leaders including Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill.
This was a surprise to the fellows, who were given little information about the program before they started.
“We felt obligated to provide more than the average internship,” said Jordan Hirsch, a senior counselor who works with Karp on special projects, including this program. “They’re really still kids, right?”
We Traveled the Oregon Trail. We Found the ‘Spirit of America’
More than 1% of Americans headed west in one of the largest voluntary mass migrations in human history. It helped define who we are as a nation.
Johnny and Vicki Blevins stepped out of their pickup and gazed down at the thin ribbon of the old Oregon Trail below them.
Over the course of several decades, perhaps as many as 500,000 migrants walked and rode along this risky route from “civilization” west to the fertile lands of Oregon and the gold fields of California, or sought religious freedom in Utah. Thousands died along the way.
And although the worn-in tracks of the route are slowly fading into the landscape, the journey it represents still looms large in our collective consciousness. Johnny Blevins, a retired North Carolina pastor with a deep love of history, has always wondered if he would have been bold enough to try it himself.
When it was all over, those who had traveled the Oregon Trail west represented more than 1% of the country’s entire population, in one of the largest voluntary mass migrations in human history. And it helped define who we are as Americans. Even today, hundreds of high school and college teams call themselves “Pioneers.”
Re: Beloved Clothing Store and $4,500. Incredible story! Comes full circle!!
Lots of good stories today.
The pioneers who took the Oregon Trail were a lot stronger and hardier than we are today. What courage it would take to leave civilization and go out into the unknown. Set against the guy who faked his death to avoid divorce. Then a woman who takes a chance on buying a building of old clothes. I would love to live somewhere where buying a home gets you two, by the way.
Kudos to the guy trying to lose half his weight. Long, hard journey there as well. Not sure sharing the journey online is always the best course to go.