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. (If you do find links that don’t work, let me know!)
Before we dive in, today of course is the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks of 9/11. According to one new bit of research:
About 37% of Americans either hadn’t been born yet on 9/11, or else were young children who weren’t old enough to remember that day.
About 83% of adults who were born before 2001 say they recall exactly where they were or what they were doing when they heard the news.
Of those adults aged 18-24 (so not born on that day), 60% learned about 9/11 in school, 16% learned from family or friends, 8% say they read something on their own, and the rest can’t remember how they learned about the attacks.
If you go back and look at photos and videos of that day, things have begun to look a bit dated: the clothes people are wearing, the makes and models of cars, the fact that the video is SD rather than HD.
As time goes on, even though that day still affects what happens to us today, and even though I — it’s become history as much as a memory.
I was born in 1970, just after the 25th anniversary of the end of World War II. If you were born in 1955, that’s about 25 years after Black Tuesday, which was the start of the Great Depression.
Anyway, I write this and I realize: I think I’m apologizing a bit for not including more 9/11-related items below. I do have one at least.
And, I casually knew a few people who lost their lives that day. I think it’s good to remember them and say a prayer.
But time marches on, whether we like it or not. And, tomorrow’s history is happening today.
Free for ALL Friday
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Hollywood Puts Four Tech Moguls on Trial in October Movie Pileup
Silicon Valley founders and CEOs are the next wave of big screen villains in buzzy projects tackling Zuckerberg, Musk, Holmes and Altman.
Hollywood’s obsession with Silicon Valley is about to reach a fever pitch with four major films set to take on controversial tech moguls.
In Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, Jeremy Strong plays Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a sequel (or “companion piece,” as Sony insists on calling it) to The Social Network. The project opens wide Oct. 9.
In Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, Andrew Garfield portrays OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during a five-day company leadership crisis when Altman was fired and then reinstated as CEO. The Neon film premieres at the New York Film Festival Oct. 5.
Alex Gibney’s takedown of Tesla and SpaceX mogul Elon Musk, titled Musk, runs nearly four hours and is released in select theaters from Bleecker Street on Oct. 16 after premiering Tuesday at Venice.
And Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s You Can See Everything follows Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes in the days before she began her stint in federal prison and beyond.
Link: The Hollywood Reporter
He’s Seen Images of 9/11 From Just About Every Angle. Except This One.
The 9/11 completist community wants to know and see everything. The Holy Grail? Pictures from inside the twin towers.
When he was 15 years old, Jonathan Walczak came upon a newspaper article that described a disposable camera found in the pocket of a dead man in the rubble of the World Trade Center.
An F.B.I. agent quoted in that 2003 article said his team had developed the film from the camera, revealing pictures taken from inside one of the towers as the Sept. 11 attacks were unfolding.
His time as a reporter taught him how to access government documents. Later that year, Mr. Walczak, now in his early 20s, filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act — his first of many — demanding that the F.B.I. release the pictures from that disposable camera.
“To me, they’re the Zapruder film of 9/11,” he said. “They’re singular and unique, a point of view unlike any other, documenting a monumental moment in American history.”
Link: New York Times
Can Zoox’s ‘Toaster on Wheels’ Conquer the Self-Driving Car Capital of America?
The Amazon-owned driverless car company is a distant second to Waymo. Its pitch to riders? Wine pop-ups, festival sponsorships and a car built to be filmed.
When Vita Shafiro, 51, and her daughter Mikhaela, 15, recently walked back to their downtown San Francisco hotel after sightseeing, an odd vehicle caught their eye.
A boxy turquoise car with no driver’s seat or steering wheel idled outside the Zoox Rider Lounge, an Art Nouveau-style storefront. Zoox, a driverless car company owned by Amazon, opened the lounge in May so that people could pose for photos in front of its self-driving cars and take a free ride in one.
Waymo, founded in 2009 as Google’s experimental self-driving car project, is by far the leader in the field. It began commercial driverless rides in 2018 and now has nearly 4,000 vehicles in 15 cities.
In contrast, Zoox, which was founded in 2014, has about 100 autonomous vehicles in its fleet. It cannot yet charge for a ride in San Francisco as it awaits state regulatory approval.
So Zoox is competing by betting that novelty, community good will and the rider experience inside its odd-looking cars — sometimes called “toasters on wheels” — can win over a city that has become the center for autonomous vehicle experiments.
Link: New York Times
Soaring Student Loan Debt Is Driving Some Americans Into the Military
Young Americans are joining the US armed forces at rapid rates, and experts say the possibility of student loan forgiveness is a key appeal.
Abigail Sears worked two jobs in high school to save for college and won a scholarship covering roughly 80% of her undergrad tuition, but she still found herself saddled with student debt: roughly $20,000 in loans to attend the University of Georgia and another $50,000 to pursue her master’s at the London School of Economics.
So she joined the Army. As part of her contract as a newly commissioned active-duty logistic officer, a portion of her student debt will be paid every year, up to $50,000 in total, leaving her on the hook for just a sliver of the balance.
“To know I don’t have to worry about that right now — I can take more of my salary and put it into my portfolio and save for a house and buy all these things that I now get to focus on financially — is actually very freeing,” says Sears, 30, who’s stationed at Camp Smith in New York. “The military is a hack.”
US military enrollment has been gaining speed of late, with armed forces recruiting in fiscal 2025 notching its best cycle in 15 years.
Link: Bloomberg
You Can Give Your Child More Tax-Free Money Than You Think
There are ways to go beyond the $19,000 annual limit without being subject to the gift tax
America’s wealth divide is increasingly a generational one. From 1989 to 2022, households headed by people age 65 to 74 added $231,000 to their median net worth, while households headed by people under 35 added just $20,000, according to Federal Reserve data.
There are several reasons for the widening gap. Older Americans have ridden decades of gains in stocks and real estate, while many younger people are stuck in rentals, struggling with the soaring cost of child care and the burden of student debt.
The result is that older Americans may have more capacity to give to their children and grandchildren than ever before. And many would rather give the money now, when it can help with a house, child care or other major expenses, than leave it behind after they die.
The good news for families considering such gifts: The tax code makes it easier to give money while you’re alive—with “warm hands,” as the saying goes—than many people realize.
Link: Wall Street Journal
$5,000 Checks for Every American? What to Know About Trump’s Latest Promise
President’s trillion-dollar idea faces hurdles in Congress, risks sparking inflation
President Trump offered a pricey promise in his convention speech Wednesday. If Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in November’s elections, he said, the U.S. will send $5,000 to each adult citizen in what the White House labels a “Trump Dividend.”
That is a new $1 trillion program—or more than the government spends on national defense each year.
There are roughly 270 million Americans ages 18 and above, and the vast majority are citizens. Sending $5,000 to each of them would likely cost well over $1 trillion.
The U.S. collected about $5.25 trillion of revenue last year, so the payments are equivalent to a 20% reduction in collections.
The likely results would be higher consumer spending, a jump in inflation and a rise in interest rates.
Is this going to happen? Probably not, even if Republicans hold on to power. Republicans have had full control of the House and Senate since January 2025, giving them ample opportunities to authorize the payments that Trump has floated.
Link: Wall Street Journal
How Would AI Actually Kill Us All? What to Know About the AI Doomsday Debate
A growing chorus of AI researchers say the technology could wipe out humans—even if all the bots want to do is make paper clips
Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned this week, saying his former employer and its rival OpenAI are racing to build technologies that “could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
In case anyone thought Coxon was alone in his views, a current Anthropic employee chimed in minutes later to confirm. “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!” wrote Evan Hubinger, whose job at Anthropic is to lead research about steering and controlling future artificial-intelligence systems. Hubinger put the extinction risk over the next decade at over 10%.
In response, many humans are now asking two questions: How could that happen? And why would people who think AI is a real and growing threat build it anyway?
Link: WSJ
What Was the Holdout Juror Thinking?
I’ve meant for a while about jury nullification — the idea that a jury that believes a defendant is guilty can vote to acquit anyway.
The judge in the Lindsay Clancy case declared a mistrial after a week of jury deadlock. Clancy is charged with murdering her three children in what prosecutors say was a cold-blooded killing, and in what she says was a fit of psychosis after months spent seeking help and being put on a long list of drugs for her declining mental health.
One juror was the holdout, refusing to vote for acquittal. He reportedly recognized that there was reasonable doubt as to her responsibility for her crime but would not apply the appropriate legal standard.
The story is a tragic one: three innocent children dead, a family in shambles. And it’s also been a galvanizing one, as women the nation over have spoken out in Clancy’s defense, noting their own postpartum struggles; many have shown up at her trial to support her, clad in pink. And there has of course been a backlash, albeit a smaller one, of people who insist that a mother who kills her children must simply be evil, no other explanation necessary.
Link: Slate
Backup: https://archive.ph/qUTMm
Russia ‘Trafficking’ Foreigners to Fight in Ukraine, Amnesty International Says
Russia has been deceiving and exploiting foreign nationals by luring them with the promise of jobs and then sending them to fight in Ukraine, a situation that in many cases can be defined as human trafficking, Amnesty International says in a new analysis.
The international human-rights organization says in a report released Thursday that Russia has recruited thousands of vulnerable people from low-income countries, as well as migrants and refugees living in Russia.
It says many recruits were promised high-paying civilian work, legal status or Russian citizenship but instead were sent to the front line in Ukraine. Some knew they were signing up for military service but were told they would be cooks or drivers, only to be sent to fight.
Researchers made six visits to prisoner-of-war camps in western Ukraine between 2024 and 2026 and interviewed dozens of people, among them 15 captured third-country nationals from Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Somalia and South Africa. Only three people they spoke with said they knew they had signed a military contract and would be sent to fight.
Link: The Globe and Mail
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend. See you in the comments!
A $5,000 bribe?
According to https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2026/4/updated-data-inflation-gasoline-costs-continue-to-soar-under-president-trump inflations costs under trump’s second term has so far cost the average American citizen $2,300. It is reasonable to expect, based on current trending, that the current figure will double, completely eating the bribe trump has floated.
If past behavior is the best predictor of future performance, why on earth would we expect things to get better since our current economy is being driven by tariffs, insurance and healthcare costs, and the unnecessary and never ending Iran war? In fact, things will likely get worse when the true cost of the war are tallied and costs are included for the new Canadian tariffs. Moreover, we clearly cannot afford a trillion dollar hit to our national budget. Sounds like socialism to me…
Hi Bill? Recently I’ve been reading about experiments where multiple AI agents were put together to do tasks. One experiment formed a society, one ran a business, and one solved high end math problems. I suspect you already know about this, but just in case, check it out. I think writing about this would be great. Thanks for your good work, as always.