Free for ALL Friday
Yes, FFA Friday is back ... You want links? We've got links. Let's see how the sausage gets made.
I hope everyone had a good week. I'm bringing back Free for ALL Friday, and this seems like the place to do it.
If you're new, or you just forget, each week I keep track of some of the off-the-path things I've read that I thought were interesting enough to share, and list them here.
Keys: We work extra-hard to make sure you never hit a paywall, using my own subscriptions, gift links, and other (100% legal) hocus-pocus.
I know there are a lot of big things going on in the world right now, but my goal with this is usually not to focus on the things that everyone else is focusing on.
Two final notes before we dive in:
First, you're invited to share your own gift links and free links in the comments. Please no acrimonious politics; there are a lot of other places for that.
Photo credit: Ian Hutchinson, UnsplashHow an Ordinary Guy Took a $3,000 Case to the Supreme Court
Stuart Harrow has his day—to one justice’s bemusement: ‘I’m just wondering why the government’s making us do this’
In the coming weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue eagerly awaited decisions on abortion, firearms and the extent of Donald Trump’s executive privilege. Another decision will also be eagerly anticipated by Stuart Harrow.
The Department of Defense employee is waiting to find out whether a missed email spells an end to his 11-year quest to get $3,000 of pay (and interest) he says was wrongly withheld during 2013 budget cuts that briefly forced him out of work.
“Here we are in the Supreme Court of the United States over a $3,000 claim,” said Justice Neil Gorsuch. “I’m— I’m just wondering why the government’s making us do this.”
The legal answer trudges a decade long path including a three-person federal board that couldn’t make a quorum for five years. There was a missed email to an abandoned account. And there was the question taken up by the court of just what Congress meant by the words “pursuant to.”
The human answer is that Harrow, 73, hasn’t given up.
(LINK: The Wall Street Journal)
I Will Never Forget Any of It’: Brittney Griner Is Ready to Talk
I have to admit I did not follow this story as closely as some at the time. But I found this long interview with WNBA star Griner, who spent almost a year in a Russian prison before being exchanged for a Russian arms dealer, quite compelling.
Griner was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony. Her release date would be Oct. 20, 2031. She froze, unable to digest the information. Her Russian lawyers surreptitiously called Cherelle on FaceTime and held the phone up through the bars of Griner’s cage, and they wept together. A nearby guard saw but did not intervene. He seemed as shocked as they were.
In early November 2022, Griner was loaded onto a train with other female inmates. After seven or eight days of traveling in cages in the dark, they finally stopped and were met by guards with automatic weapons and barking German shepherds. Griner had been taken to a repurposed Soviet-era gulag in Mordovia, 200 miles outside Moscow. ... For several days, no one in her family or on her legal team knew where she was.
…
She decided to adopt a new survival strategy: letting go of hope. “I thought I was going to be there for the long haul,” she told me. “I’m tired of waiting for the day. It’s easier to just accept the situation I’m in. I’m an inmate.”
(Link: The New York Times)
The Story Behind Vietnamese Nail Salons in the U.S.
Short version: It can all be traced to a actress, Tippi Hedren (best known for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film, The Birds) who worked with Vietnamese refugees in 1975, and who brought in her own Hollywood manicurist to teach 20 how to get their licenses and open salons.
According to the National Museum of American History, more than half of all nail salons in this country are owned by Vietnamese Americans and more than half of the nail salon workforce is Vietnamese—the majority of which are women.
And while the industry—specifically Asian-owned nail salons—has faced scrutiny for underpaying and exploiting workers, the story behind how Vietnamese women were introduced to nail work is worth telling. Because their prominence in the industry has not been by accident.
Hedren and the original 20 women still hold reunions from time to time, none of them knowing then the impact their relationships would have on an entire industry.
(Link: Joy Sauce)
Americans Are Sleeping More Than Ever. See How You Compare
It wasn’t just you who rolled over and hit the snooze button this morning. Americans are now sleeping more than at any point in the past two decades, a trend that accelerated during the pandemic.
An individual in the United States gained 10 minutes of sleep per day, on average, between 2019 and 2022, according to data from the American Time Use Survey. That’s a meaningful increase, even at the individual level, sleep experts said. But those extra moments of counting sheep weren’t evenly shared. The biggest sleep gains were seen in younger adults between the ages of 25 and 34, men of all ages and people without children.
The sleep time gains by Americans could be because of the increase in remote work post-pandemic, with over a third of workers now doing their jobs at home.
Also included: A little interface where you can enter your bedtime, waketime, age and sex, and learn how you compare to other people. I did it. Apparently, I’m pretty average.
(Link: The Washington Post)
Meet Regularly, Invest Time – and Don’t Hold Grudges: 10 Ways to Revitalize Flagging Friendships
A lot of the advice here includes things you'd probably think of yourself. But it's food for thought to have it in one place. Even if you think your friend life is going just fine, thank you, I'll bet you know someone else who might benefit from it.
(Link: The Guardian)
The Drinking Fountain Button is Tragically Misunderstood
This is both an arguably interesting article about the history and mechanics of public drinking fountains and a small glimpse into how my brain works, as it's the kind of thing I find while looking for something else and then realize 1,500 words into it that I haven't stopped reading. (Apparently this writer has an entire years-long series on how various buttons work in technology.
Who among us hasn’t walked up to a drinking fountain, expecting a bubbling stream of life-giving water, only to experience the crushing disappointment of a measly trickle after smashing in that button?
But I’m beginning to think it’s not the drinking button’s fault; they’re actually some of the most elegant buttons out there. They’re one of the few remaining buttons where your push directly and mechanically controls the result.
The problem is a lack of even that basic maintenance that turns bubblers into dribblers, Haws technical product manager Josh Linn tells me. Many just need their strainer cleaned out or their height screw adjusted, he says. One of the company’s owners used to carry a little screwdriver around everywhere they went to fix dribbling fountains — if you want to try it yourself, Epker says a 1/8-inch flat-blade screwdriver is the largest that will fit.
(Link: The Verge)
Choose Your Animated Television Show Anniversary: SpongeBob Squarepants or Family Guy, Each Now Turning 25 Years Old
Isn't it supposed to be difficult to create an animated television show that lasts a quarter of a century? It turns out both SpongeBob SquarePants and Family Guy, which come from very different places, each debuted in 1999 and are thus both marking 25th anniversaries this year. I can't imagine one article would cover both shows, so I have two for you:
Watch the Family Guy Cast Celebrate Their 25-Year Anniversary (Link: Esquire)
Key creator quote: "When I started in the business, I thought that if I could create something that people either fall asleep to or get high to, then I would really feel like a writer," MacFarlane says. "Like Hemingway."
The Iconic SpongeBob SquarePants Made His TV Debut 25 Years Ago (Link: NPR)
Key creator quote: "It wasn't until I drew a square sponge, like a sink sponge, that it really seemed to fit that character that I was looking for, that innocent, squeaky-clean I guess you could say, the square peg in the round hole."
Yay!!! FFA Friday is back!! It's one of my favorites 😍 thanks, Bill!!
Nail salons…who knew???