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.
The 20-Somethings Who Raised $121 Million to Build Military Drones
Neros, a company founded in 2023 by former teenage drone racers, won a coveted Army contract and is gaining popularity in the defense sector.
Soren Monroe-Anderson, a champion drone racer, was only 20 years old when he first tried to sell his drones to the U.S. military. He was building them for Ukrainian forces in his parents’ garage with a friend.
The military was not interested.
“‘You can’t just waltz into the Pentagon as 21-year-olds and sell weapon systems to the D.O.D.,’” said the friend, Olaf Hichwa, recalling the response from a senior Department of Defense official.
But two years later, Mr. Monroe-Anderson, now 22, and Mr. Hichwa, who just turned 24, are selling drones to the U.S. Army.
Neros, the company they founded in 2023, has been selected to supply its signature drones, called Archer, to the Army, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. Neros is one of three American drone manufacturers picked as vendors for the first phase of an Army program that is buying low-cost, expendable drones.
The Army contract has been closely watched as a bellwether of which American drone companies will dominate the market. For Neros, it comes on the heels of raising $75 million in venture funding, led by Sequoia Capital, and receiving a $17 million Marine Corps contract for thousands of drones, as well as an international drone coalition contract to supply 6,000 drones to Ukraine.
Neros’s latest round of funding closed last week, bringing the total raised by the start-up to $121 million and cementing Mr. Monroe-Anderson’s and Mr. Hichwa’s status as wunderkinds of the emerging U.S. drone industry.
Record Numbers of Younger Women Want to Leave the U.S.
Desire to migrate among younger American women has quadrupled in the past decade.
Unlike their peers in other advanced economies, younger American women now stand apart from the rest of the U.S. in several respects, according to a new Gallup poll.
They increasingly lack faith in national institutions and picture their futures beyond America’s borders.
In 2025, 40% of women aged 15 to 44 say they would move abroad permanently if they had the opportunity. The current figure is four times higher than the 10% who shared this desire in 2014, when it was generally in line with other age and gender groups.
The growing trend is not evident in other advanced economies.
Across 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the percentage of younger women who say they would like to migrate has held relatively steady for years, typically averaging between 20% and 30%.
AI Relationships Are on the Rise. A Divorce Boom Could Be Next
Secret chatbot flings are creating new legal challenges for married couples when it comes to infidelity.
Rebecca Palmer isn’t a psychic, but as a divorce attorney she can often see what’s coming next.
For many people today, as AI saturates every aspect of life—from work to therapy—the allure of an AI romance is tantalizing.
Reddit is full of stories from people who’ve said AI has driven a wedge in their relationships. One woman decided to end her marriage of 14 years after discovering her husband—who believed he was in a real relationship with a woman he called his “sexy Latina baby girl”—spent thousands of dollars on a OnePay credit card and an AI app “designed to mimic underage girls.”
In June, WIRED reported on the tangled future of chatbot love and the unexpected fallout it can cause. That story followed Eva, a 46-year-old writer and editor from New York, who, after getting too attached to her AI companions—she admitted they “became harder to ignore”—ended the relationship with her human partner after they both agreed it felt like she was cheating on him.
As chatbot romances become more commonplace, causing irreparable rifts in relationships, a new legal frontier is emerging in family law that is rewriting the rules of marital misconduct: An AI affair is now grounds for divorce.
What Does ‘6-7’ Mean? Maybe Tweens Don’t Want You to Know.
Everyone wants to understand the generation below them. Can young people rebuff those efforts by being completely absurd?
If you’d like to truly mortify yourself in front of a young person, try asking the meaning of a phrase that’s being repeated in schools around the country like an incantation: “6-7.”
This is the oldest trick in the adolescent handbook: Say something silly, stump adults, repeat until maturity. Today, though, such terms ricochet around a network of publications and on the pages of influencers, all promising to decipher youth behavior for older audiences. “Six-seven” feels a bit like a nonsense grenade lobbed at the heart of that ecosystem.
Desperate to understand us? Good luck, losers!
You’ve Heard of FOMO. How About FOFO?
You’re undoubtedly familiar with the term FOMO—fear of missing out—but you may not have heard of FOFO: fear of finding out. It’s a common reason many people don’t get recommended health screening tests such as mammograms, Pap smears, STD tests, blood tests, and full-body skin cancer checks.
FOFO isn’t a clinical diagnosis; it’s a colloquial term and something many people and doctors are well acquainted with. In recent years, it’s been gaining more attention in the medical community and the media. “There is very little research on this specific topic, but clinicians who work in the area of health anxiety are very familiar with it,” says Steven Taylor, a professor and clinical psychologist at the University of British Columbia and coauthor of the book It’s Not All in Your Head: How Worrying about Your Health Could Be Making You Sick—and What You Can Do About It.
One 2025 survey of 2,000 employed U.S. adults found that three out of five of them avoid health screenings, and fear of bad news or embarrassment are common reasons.
The Perverse Consequences of the ‘Easy A‘
In the era of grade inflation, students at top colleges are more stressed than ever.
During their final meeting of the spring 2024 semester, after an academic year marked by controversies, infighting, and the defenestration of the university president, Harvard’s faculty burst out laughing. As was tradition, the then-dean of Harvard College, Rakesh Khurana, had been providing updates on the graduating class. When he got to GPA, Khurana couldn’t help but chuckle at how ludicrously high it was: about 3.8 on average. The rest of the room soon joined in, according to a professor present at the meeting.
They were cracking up not simply because grades had gotten so high but because they knew just how little students were doing to earn them.
And yet, these students report being more stressed about school than ever. Without meaningful grades, the most ambitious students have no straightforward way to stand out. And when straight A’s are the norm, the prospect of getting even a single B can become terrifying. As a result, students are anxious, distracted, and hyper-focused on using extracurriculars to distinguish themselves in the eyes of future employers.
How a Small North Carolina College Became a Magnet for Wealthy Students
Schools are trying to attract the limited pool of higher-end families, and High Point University is a blueprint. ‘Half of Wall Street sends their kids to this school.’
HIGH POINT, N.C.—On a typical weeknight, students at High Point University might sit down to filet mignon at “1924 PRIME,” the on-campus steakhouse. This isn’t a mere perk. Servers are told to coach the young diners on body language, professional attire, which fork to use and when to salt their food.
It is one of the striking amenities at High Point, which prides itself on preparing students for the rigors of a career—and has also become a favorite of affluent families. “Half of Wall Street sends their kids to this school,” President Nido Qubein says in an interview.
Universities nationwide are battling to pad their balance sheets by attracting families who will pay full sticker price, particularly as the Trump administration slashes funding. High Point is something of a blueprint. Its model—catering to a wealthier student body—has fueled its enrollment growth, campus expansion and financial stability.
The school’s motto emphasizes “life skills.” Because job interviews and client deals often happen over meals, administrators want students to rehearse social etiquette. So they built a steakhouse, Mediterranean restaurant and Teppanyaki grill, where students can eat weekly as part of their meal plan. Reservations are required; phones banished.
Also on campus is an airplane-cabin interior, because sitting next to an executive on a plane could offer a golden opportunity—one young people should rehearse for. The campus concierge offers students airport shuttle service for free if they wear a High Point University shirt; otherwise it costs $95—a lesson in brand awareness.
I fully understand women wanting to leave the US. The government is intent in eroding their freedoms and right to body autonomy that were fought for in the 1960’s. Cannot be a democracy when you subjugate 50% of the population.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko was a Soviet sniper during World War II who, by age 25, had 309 confirmed kills of Nazi soldiers—making her one of the most successful snipers in history.
I think of her—
Lyudmila with the flint-bright gaze,
twenty-five and already fluent
in the terrible grammar of war.
Her rifle a long, cold sentence
she wrote against fascism
three hundred times
without stuttering.
And still,
when she crossed the ocean,
the men with pens—
the cowardly little curators of gossip—
looked at her bare face
as if modesty were a misdemeanor,
as if eyeliner could outshine accuracy,
as if survival ought to come
with rouge.
This is the country,
I remind myself,
that loves a woman dead
more than it loves a woman unadorned.
A country that wants our lashes curled
even as the world burns
at the hem of our skirts.
Lady Death,
teach me how to hold steady.
Not the rifle—
I have no stomach for that kind of mercy—
but the sightline.
Teach me the precise breath
before the truth lands.
Teach me how not to tremble
when the agendas crawl out
of their marble offices
like well-dressed locusts.
I want your discipline,
your don’t-you-dare,
your I-see-you,
your I-will-not-look-away.
You knew what I’m learning now—
that history keeps trying on
the same uniform,
just better tailored.
That fascism comes back
wearing a flag pin and a smile,
speaking the language of law and order
while sharpening its teeth
on the vulnerable.
You saw it rise once.
We’re watching the dress rehearsal
for its return.
Because we are being hunted
by quieter things now—
backroom deals,
polished lies,
the tender little knives
of men who think democracy
is a paper doll
they can cut
to their liking.
Lady Death,
I don’t want to kill the bodies—
just the rot in their briefcases.
Just the carnivorous policies
that gnaw and gnaw
on the margins of the poor.
Just the sickness masquerading
as leadership.
Let me be
your daughter of refusal:
no lipstick required,
no permission slip signed,
no softening of the jaw
for men who mistake cruelty
for competence.
Aim me,
steady and unshakeable,
toward the center
of every lie
they think we won’t notice.
And let the shot I take
be this:
a woman who will not look away.
They’ll write about us too, you know—
how we wore our faces bare,
how we refused the makeup and the numbing,
how we became
what frightened them most:
awake.
— Gloria Horton-Young, She Who Stirs the Storm