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.
Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.
The leather-bound book was compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell. The president says the letter ‘is a fake thing,’ and suggests some Epstein files were ‘made up’ by former Presidents Obama or Biden.
It was Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, and Ghislaine Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein’s family and friends. One of them was Donald Trump.
The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.
The letter concludes: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
In an interview with the Journal on Tuesday evening, Trump denied writing the letter or drawing the picture:
“This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story ...
“I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” he said. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words. ...
“I’m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else."
It isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared. Inside the outline of the naked woman was a typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person.
“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,” the note began.
Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.
Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.
Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.
Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?
Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.
Trump: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.
Earlier Tuesday, after the Journal sought comment from the president about the letter, Trump told reporters at the White House that he believed some Epstein files were “made up” by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden and former FBI Director James Comey.
Everyone’s Obsessed With True Crime. Even Prisoners Like Me.
John J. Lennon is serving a sentence of 28 years to life at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York. He is a contributing editor at Esquire. His book, “The Tragedy of True Crime,” comes out in September.
It’s strange to walk down the tier, look through the bars of someone’s cell and see a TV turned to “Lockup” — an inside look at prison for someone who is already inside a prison.
The TVs in our prison cells help to incapacitate us, which, along with punishing us, is one of the purposes of incarceration. But right now they are also serving a bizarre purpose: Cellblocks full of people who killed or hurt or robbed are watching real-life murders, kidnappings and robberies for entertainment.
Some watch with the prison hierarchy in mind. I recently caught up with Simon Dedaj, a friend of mine at Shawangunk Correctional, a maximum-security facility that houses high-profile prisoners. Simon asked if I remembered a guy we both knew years ago. “Get this,” he said. “He told me he killed a cop, right?”
Recently, falling asleep to “New York Homicide,” Dedaj heard the guy’s name and perked up: It turned out the “cop” he was in prison for killing was a girlfriend who worked in a police crime lab. It wasn’t the first time the show had revealed something unsavory about someone we knew. “Everyone’s on edge about it. So they removed the channel,” Dedaj said — and replaced it with ID, another true-crime network.
Are Diamonds Even a Luxury Anymore? De Beers Reckons With Price Plunge
Here's how The Wall Street Journal opened this article about the head of De Beers taking on lab-grown diamonds:
De Beers chief executive Al Cook wants to save a generation of lovers and newlyweds from what he calls a “huge con” when it comes to buying diamonds.
In the process, he hopes to rescue his iconic brand—and perhaps the diamond industry as it has existed for more than a century—from an ominous decline.
Here's how I would have written it slightly differently, preserving the CEO's point of view without looking like you're naively buying into it:
De Beers chief executive Al Cook wants to rescue his iconic brand—and perhaps the diamond industry as it has existed for more than a century—from an ominous decline.
In the process, he says he hopes to save a generation of lovers and newlyweds from what he calls a “huge con” when it comes to buying diamonds.
It goes on from there -- but I found it an interesting read, all leading to this question:
If you were in the market for a diamond engagement ring (or advising someone), would you tell them to buy a "real" diamond, or spend about 80% less on a lab-grown one that can't be distinguished without a $9,500 piece of equipment (sold, of course, by DeBeers)?
Here Legally Since 1999, Thousands of Immigrants Have 60 Days to Leave
In September, the Department of Homeland Security will end temporary protections for more than 50,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans who have lived in the U.S. for decades.
They are nurses, mechanics, sanitation workers and executives. They’ve fallen in love, bought houses and raised children. They’ve opened restaurants and construction companies, paid taxes and contributed to Social Security, living and working legally in the United States since 1999.
Now more than 50,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans stand to abruptly lose their legal status as the Trump administration seeks to end their protections, in place since the Clinton era, under the temporary protected status program, or TPS. Amid a broader campaign to crack down on immigration, the Department of Homeland Security said that because “conditions have improved” in Honduras and Nicaragua, it is ending the program for natives of those countries in early September.
The decision, announced in early July, has been met with outrage and a lawsuit. Immigration advocates hope federal courts will intervene. But in the meantime, the order has left tens of thousands of people grappling with the possibility that they will be forced to leave their families and U.S.-citizen children to return to countries where they have no immediate family, no community, no jobs — places that in some cases they haven’t seen in nearly three decades.
Inside ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ Detainees and Guards Report Relentless Mosquitoes, Limited Water
I know it's a different situation, but it's jarring to read a convicted murderer above, describing his favorite TV shows, and the conditions here for people who generally have not been convicted of any crime.
Two weeks after it opened, a temporary migrant detention center in the Everglades is facing expensive logistical challenges: portable toilets routinely back up, sewage needs to be collected and trucked out, and swarms of mosquitoes attack detainees and staff alike.
One former guard said she left her job at another South Florida correctional facility because the pay at Alligator Alcatraz was so enticing. She quit after about a week because she grew upset about the conditions for staff and detainees.
Without permanent structures, electricity or running water, drinking and bathing water has to be brought in several times a day but is still in short supply, and rainwater leaks into the tents that protect detainees’ chain-link cells, according to interviews with three former guards and phone interviews with detainees.
Their accounts offer details of conditions inside the $450 million detention center, which has become a symbol for the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies and been dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by Republicans. Five other states are considering using the site as a model, said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement prepares to double the nation’s immigrant detention capacity to 100,000 beds.
“No lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been treated better than illegal aliens in the United States, and yet all they do is complain,” Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
Calvin And Hobbes’s Gruesome Snowmen Were A World All Their Own
OK, big switching of gears here. This is so quirky and weird, but also 100% relatable if you happen to be a 50-something man who grew up in the suburbs and who picked up the newspaper every day to be sure to read the latest 4-panel (longer on Sundays!) installment.
Calvin and Hobbes is perfect. It's the perfect comic strip. I don't know any way to describe it better than that. It is earnest and sarcastic, philosophical and silly, violent and serene. It ran for 10 years, and ended at the height of its creativity.
But: the snowmen. That running gag wasn't about heart, or so I didn't think as a kid. It was about what a young boy finds funny, and what a young boy finds funny is cartoonish violence, and what a young boy finds strange is that everyone doesn't find it as funny as he does.
"The thing that I really enjoy about him is that he has no sense of restraint, he doesn't have the experience yet to know the things that you shouldn't do," [creator Bill Watterson] said, back before he swore off media appearances. And, in another interview: "The socialization that we all go through to become adults teaches you not to say certain things because you later suffer the consequences. Calvin doesn't know that rule of thumb yet."
In his world of snowmen, however, Calvin was god. He made the rules. He dealt out punishments. He reveled in making others perform for his amusement, because in his life, he was the servile homunculus forever at the mercy of authority figures operating under mores he didn't understand and thus felt arbitrary.
These Restaurants, Salons and Workouts Are Free for Hot People—if They Post About Them
While regular-looking people fiercely compete for tables on Resy and OpenTable, models and influencers say they can easily book entire days of meals and experiences on a different app.
How do you build a successful small business? For some, the answer is simple: Get hot people to show up.
While regular-looking people fiercely compete for tables on Resy, models and influencers say they can easily book entire days of meals and experiences on an app called Neon Coat. The dinners, salon appointments, fitness classes and tarot readings available on the app are typically free in exchange for social-media posts.
Earlier this year, travel content creator Lauren Karwoski posted a video on TikTok showing how she could fill an entire day with Neon Coat offers. She grabbed a green juice from gourmet eatery Mangia (normally $9) in the morning, then took a workout class at Barry’s (about $40 in New York City). Afterward, she got her eyebrows laminated at Nampa by Himalayan Salon (“I do this monthly anyways, so [I saved] myself 100 bucks right here”). That evening, she met another Neon Coat user for a glass of wine at Paros, a Greek restaurant in Tribeca. She estimated she saved $200 that day. “My favorite thing is that it’s stuff that I would do normally,” she said of the app.
The app also includes activities such as ax-throwing and professional services including legal consultations. Some products and services are offered at steep discounts, like a blowout for $30 instead of $85, or $5,000 off a set of porcelain veneers. Restaurants and bars usually just require a tip for the staff. The businesses on Neon Coat pay a monthly subscription fee, usually less than $1,000, and receive a guaranteed stream of organic social-media content in return.
great newsletter! so many interesting articles to read!
If you really love someone, the price of the ring doesn’t matter. A $25 cubic zirconia ring can have just as much meaning as a $25,000 diamond. It’s the thought behind that is most important.
And will Jeffrey Epstein just go away? I have no doubt Trump knew him, was probably at some of his parties, and if he would stop “lying and denying” the whole thing probably would just die. The more he protests, the more that is going to keep coming up.
I still go to the comics first, even without Calvin and Hobbes, although I was always more a Garfield lover.