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.
They’re Tiny. They’re Slow. And People Are Obsessed.
In an era of supersized pickups and SUVs, Kei cars and trucks bring a (very) little piece of Japan to the United States. Getting one on the road can be complicated.
Aaron Corn spent a recent afternoon adding some pizazz to his 1991 Subaru Sambar, a white pickup truck that looked as if it had shrunk in the wash.
As his wife, Laura, packed the Sambar with drinks and snacks, Mr. Corn carefully applied decals to its side paneling that contained the Japanese symbols for Fujiwara Tofu Store, a fictional business in the manga series, “Initial D.”
In the series, the main character drives a hatchback. But near his home in Leesburg, Va., Mr. Corn, 50, tools around in his Sambar, a type of vehicle known as a Kei truck. Ubiquitous in Japan for decades, Kei trucks are extremely small, decidedly slow and, despite a series of federal and state laws that can make them difficult to import and register, quietly growing in popularity among American consumers.
“They had been on my radar,” he said, “but when I finally saw one in person, I knew that I had to have one.”
How I Lost My Career and Started Delivering Mail
No one expects to have to start over from the bottom rung at age 50. But when the pandemic struck, marketing professional Stephen Starring Grant rose to the challenge.
I was still waiting for my flight home to Virginia when the call from my boss came. “Steve,” he said, “we’re both adults, so I don’t need to belabor this.” He was a gentleman and a pro about it, like he always was. I’d had the pleasure of working with him for years, and now that was over. I was being laid off.
My skill set was not particularly practical; I wasn’t a cardiologist or a plumber. My work in the two decades before the pandemic had a bunch of names—Brand Strategist, Marketing Consultant, Consumer Psychologist—but getting a new marketing job was going to be a near impossibility for the foreseeable future.
It was certainly never going to happen before my health insurance ran out in a couple of weeks. Which was a problem, because a couple of months earlier I had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. It was certainly never going to happen before my health insurance ran out in a couple of weeks. Which was a problem, because a couple of months earlier I had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
To get unemployment, I had to be actively searching for a new job.
Except for a job as a part-time letter carrier with the U.S. Postal Service. It paid $18.50 an hour, and it came with healthcare on day one.
I Paid Off A School's Lunch Debt. Then Strangers On The Internet Did Something Truly Stunning.
This is proof that strangers can decide, together, to make things better.
The essay I wrote for HuffPost a few months ago wasn’t supposed to have a second act.
It was a story about how I’d seen a headline about $2.8 million in school lunch debt across Utah, and how that big, abstract number led me to a small, concrete one — $835 for a single elementary school.
I wrote about the strange feeling of driving to a district office on my lunch break to hand over a personal check to clear that debt, feeling both incredibly useful and deeply complicit in a broken system.
So when my piece went live, I was fully prepared to see the script play out.
Except the readers apparently didn’t get a copy of the script. Because they didn’t just read about a problem and sigh or scroll on ― they did the improbable, the practical, the quietly heroic thing. They erased the lunch debt at schools they’ve probably never heard of, in a town they’ll probably never visit, for kids they’ll almost certainly never meet.
Russia’s ‘Anti-Woke’ Visa Lures Those Fearing a Moral Decline in the West
In a brightly lit conference room of a Moscow police department, a smiling officer flanked by Russian flags and gilded double-headed eagles handed over small blue booklets to an American family of five — asylum certificates granting them the right to live and work in Russia after fleeing Texas because they felt their way of life was under threat.
Footage of the ceremony, shared on the Interior Ministry’s official media channels, was accompanied by a caption declaring that “yet another American family choose our country to live in … understanding that in our country traditional values are protected by the state.”
The Hare family, devout Christians who ran a farm in Texas, describe themselves as a family of “moral migrants” and have emerged as the face of a small but growing trend of Westerners relocating to Russia in search of the traditional, conservative values they feel are eroding in the liberal West. Their journey reflects the ideological narrative Putin has spent years crafting: Russia as the guardian of family-centered traditions amid a Western world spiraling into moral and social decay.
But behind the headlines, some newcomers face serious challenges — running into legal and financial issues, grappling with frozen bank accounts, or getting lost in the country and its layers of bureaucracy — though criticism remains muted.
Bonus: Telegram link showing one family’s effusive praise for Putin after being granted “asylum” in Russia.
The Strength You Gain by Not Taking Offense
We all face uncivil behavior or insulting comments at times, but you can choose how to react.
Unless you inhabit a hermit cave with no internet access, you’ll know that we live in the Age of Offense.
According to a 2024 Pew Research Center study, 47 percent of Americans believe that people saying things that are “very offensive” to others is a major problem in the country today, whereas only 11 percent say it is not a problem. (The remainder says it is a minor problem.)
You might conclude that the solution is for people to stop offending others—good luck with that!—but consider another statistic in the same poll: A large percentage of Americans (62 percent) says another big problem is “people being too easily offended by things others say.” These are not at all mutually exclusive findings; they suggest that we are simultaneously too offensive and too thin-skinned.
Instead of spending your efforts trying to stamp out what you find offensive, you should work on being less offended in the first place.
Why English Doesn’t Use Accents, and Why French is Full of Them
A monk named Godwin stares at the word. Scip. It’s the right word, the right spelling. The ‘sc’ makes the same sound that the Normans spell ‘sh.’ But Robert won’t see it that way. For him, this will be nothing but Saxon stubbornness.
Godwin takes up his knife. The steel edge scrapes away the ink, taking a thin layer of the vellum with it. He smooths the spot and writes the word again, this time as he knows Robert will want it: ship. An English word, somehow made foreign.
He works on, his hand steady. He reaches a later entry: the arrival of a new queen. Pride or the devil takes hold of his soul, and he writes cwen. He thinks with a smile of Edith, the last English queen, a woman of his grandfather's time.
Then the smile vanishes. There are no more English queens or kings. Only Normans.
He scrapes the vellum clean again and writes it like a Norman would: queen.
Our fictional monk Godwin lived in the wake of the single most significant event in the history of the English language: the Norman Conquest of 1066.
The period of French dominance left its mark on all aspects of the language, from vocabulary to pronunciation. And, as Godwin found to his chagrin, it had a revolutionary impact on English spelling.
Hundreds of Neighbors Rally to Give a 9-Year-Old With Cancer One Last Christmas
The days leading up to Saturday night’s event were hot and humid, but that didn’t stop the community from decorating miles of houses for Kasey Zachmann.
Kelley Zocks doesn’t usually go all out for Christmas. She might hang some twinkly lights, maybe put up a wreath on the red door of her home.
But on the last Saturday in June, following a week of dangerously hot temperatures in the D.C. region, Zocks dotted her walkway with glowing luminaria, set up a red inflatable shopfront announcing “cookies for Santa,” propped open lawn chairs and put on a Mrs. Claus costume and wig before loading up a cooler with dozens of chocolate ice pops. Frozen hot cocoa, if you will.
Hers was one of hundreds of households that signed up to celebrate Christmas in June for a little girl with cancer who might not make it to December. For miles, in the thick heat and humidity, neighbors dressed in holiday apparel gathered to watch the girl and her family wind through streets alight and glowing, like a scene out of a Christmas card.
At a time when crises, global and local, feel constant and far beyond any one person’s control, several community members said they felt grateful to be able to do something tangible to help one family find a moment of happiness in the face of certain tragedy.
that little truck story reminds me of when I put a deposit down on a Smart Car. I was w/ some friends staying at a B&B in Arkansas once (many stories about that place haha), the owners had a Suburban, which I also had, & the 6'+ man also had a Smart Car, which I had never seen. Brand new to the states. So cute. He let me drive it. Flat area, it drove fine. I came home, no dealer had any yet, but I found the first in town that was going to get some, so I put a deposit down. Then awhile later a near-by dealer received one, so I test drove it. The area I lived in, while you wouldn't expect it, actually was quite hilly. That little car would barely putt-putt up those little hills, plus knowing that most driving I did, I would use the interstate, I called the first dealer & said to cancel my order, w/ the fully promised money back guarantee. He gave me the hardest time claiming I had to come in for the refund, even tho I placed the original order over the phone - the dealership was in another county on the other side of where I was. I finally had to make threats before he relented & gave me my money back.
several weeks ago I posted the link about "The Strength You Gain..." - great article. I never watch broadcast news. Rarely talk politics w/ anyone in real life, except husband. In my volunteer time, no one I know, co-workers nor clients, knows anyone's political leanings. It's all good. As you've seen in Bill's newsletter, at times I'll get sucked in, then it's just head-banging... or echo chambers. Pointless, waste of time. I regret it.
The story about paying off the lunch debt - I wanted to copy/paste so much to emphasize!! Picked this one:
"Just a bunch of regular adults, quietly, and for a moment, refusing to be bystanders to something as insane as school lunch debt."
then he goes on to describe the absolutely, wonderful butterfly affect!!!! ♥️💯♥️
The last story about Christmas in June was great. Thanks for publishing such stories at a time when we all need more positive examples of love, empathy, and the true American spirit.