Free for ALL Friday!
It's Free for All Friday!
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.
This week’s collection is a survey of things Americans are trying to get away from right now:
Internet bills. Our parents’ stuff. Our kids’ screens. Our bosses. Our memories.
In one rather dark case, alleged war crimes disguised as “tourism.”
So, you know, light Friday reading.
I made a voice agent to call my Internet provider
We’re so desperate to avoid talking to customer service that some of us are now building AI agents to be jerks on our behalf.
My internet bill crept up by about $15 a month over the summer. I know I can likely lower it by comparing rates to a competitor company, but I’ve been pushing off that phone call.
It all seemed more work than it was worth. But what if I could outsource this chore, for free?
Using a generative AI voice tool, I was able to turn myself into an agent. Agentic me was tasked with trying to get my internet price lowered and programmed to be short on patience. Its bossy tone made me cringe and feel sympathy for the human worker on the other side.
“I’ve been a loyal customer for a while now and I don’t think it’s fair that new customers get better deals,” my agent snapped. “It sounds like you’re telling me I should just go ahead and cancel.”
Screen-time worries send parents in increasingly desperate directions
Speaking of outsourcing problems: Parents are now paying $8,000 for “detox camps” and hiring screen-time coaches to deal with their kids’ device addiction.
Daniel Towle, a 36-year-old professional screen-time coach in Britain, says many parents ask the same question: What’s the perfect amount of screen time to make kids behave?
The reality he’s found is more complicated. Many parents are just as glued to their devices as their kids. And a job he thought would be mostly technical advice has become more about relationships and helping parents navigate a complex ecosystem that wasn’t designed with children in mind.
“It’s fend for yourself out there,” Towle says. “Parents are trying to keep their kids alive, keep them safe, keep them happy — and then you somehow have to know how Instagram and TikTok algorithms work, how a VPN works. You have to understand what Discord is.”
Also: going cold turkey rarely works. Which is probably not what parents paying $8,000 want to hear.
The Boomer Stuff avalanche is already crushing families
It started out cute when Aaron Terrazas’ retired parents began gifting him and his siblings trinkets from their travels. Then it quickly became annoying.
“It just became more stuff that filled up our homes that we didn’t need or have space for,” says Terrazas, a 40-year-old economist in Seattle.
He finally had to explain: These objects were their memories, not his. If they gave him things he didn’t want, he’d mail them right back. The family made a rule: The only gifts allowed are ones that can be eaten or consumed.
His parents abide by it “for the most part,” he says, but “sometimes they need a reminder.”
The boomer stuff avalanche is upon us. Just as boomers and the Silent Generation are expected to pass on some $100 trillion in wealth to younger generations, they’re also expected to pass down the mounds of possessions they’ve accumulated over their lifetimes.
Estate planning attorney Connie Tromble Eyster says she encourages clients to ask their kids, “Are there things you want?” A lot of the time, the response is: “I don’t want anything.”
10 subtle signs that you might be ready to retire
If your kids are trying to escape your knickknacks, maybe you’re trying to escape our boss. This Wall Street Journal listicle offers signs you might be ready to retire, including this gem:
“You hate your boss. This is the biggest reason most folks leave their jobs,” says David Conti, a retirement coach. “And at some point, you have to realize: This could be your last boss. So that raises the question: Is it a good enough reason for you to retire?”
Conti suggests an appointment with HR. They probably can’t do much about your boss, but many companies are eager to cut payroll and might pull together an early-retirement package for you.
Colin Jost, Pete Davidson and the Staten Island ferry fiasco
Not everyone gets to escape their mistakes.
Colin Jost and Pete Davidson—proud Staten Island natives who spent years together on “Saturday Night Live”—bought a decommissioned Staten Island Ferry nearly four years ago for $280,100.
They envisioned a floating event space with two restaurants, six bars, a concert venue, and hotel rooms with private sundecks. Grand plans. $35 million worth of plans.
These days the John F. Kennedy, a 277-foot ferryboat, just sits on the Kill Van Kull tidal strait, its future as murky as the waters that surround it.
Jost, 43, has called the acquisition “the dumbest and least thought-through purchase I’ve ever made in my life.” Davidson, 31, has described it as “a lifelong problem for me and Colin.”
It seems as if they might have paid $280,000 too much for it.
Robert L. Stirm, returning P.O.W. in Pulitzer-winning photo, dies at 92
Some things you can’t escape, even when the camera tells a different story.
etired Col. Robert L. Stirm died on Nov. 11 at age 92. You probably know his face from one of the most famous photographs of the Vietnam War era—the joyous image of him returning home to his beaming family after more than five years as a prisoner of war.
In the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, his 15-year-old daughter Lorrie races toward him on the tarmac at Travis Air Force Base, grinning ecstatically, arms outstretched, feet off the ground as if levitating. Her sister and two brothers hurry toward him too, smiling. Their mother, Loretta, wore a large corsage for the occasion.
For Colonel Stirm, the joyous homecoming captured on camera obscured an agonizing reality: Three days before he landed, he was handed what he described as a “Dear John” letter from his wife.
His will to survive as a P.O.W., he later said, was built on memories of his domestic life and the hope of returning one day to his family. But the marriage was already over.
Wealthy foreigners ‘paid £80k for weekend safaris to kill civilians’ in Sarajevo
And then there’s this. If true, may these people never escape.
Italian authorities are investigating allegations that wealthy foreigners—from Italy, the US, Russia, and elsewhere—paid tens of thousands of pounds to become “weekend snipers” during the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s.
Gun enthusiasts and far-Right extremists allegedly travelled to the war-torn city with sniper rifles to pick off terrified Bosnians “for fun.”
Witnesses and investigators claim there was a price list for the targeted killings. Foreigners would pay more to shoot children and men who were armed and in uniform.
The amateur snipers paid the modern-day equivalent of €80,000 to €100,000 to take part in what they apparently considered a chilling “sport.”
Serbia has denied the claims.
Robert L. Stirm, returning P.O.W. in Pulitzer-winning photo - I knew this photo - I did not know of the "Dear John" letter. That hit me hard. Not because I have received such a letter, but as a child (now adult obviously) of a Viet Nam veteran and life-long career soldier, it just seems like such a deep cut after being a POW. Of course, there are all the ingredients of the story that I do not know...but still...
None of those stories surprised me. Parents need to put strict limits on screen time from the beginning of giving their kids devices. Yeah, they make good babysitters but that is not being a good parent. And yes, a hotel on the river seems like a good idea but they had no idea what was involved in that process when they bought the ferry. And it will cost them dearly to have it recycled.
I get the marriage break up, five years is a long time to be a single parent when you don’t know if your spouse will ever come home, and when he does come home, he won’t be the same person any more. And the Serbia story doesn’t really surprise me, either. The ultra rich think that the rules of society don’t apply to them, just look at Jeffrey Epstein and P. Diddy. Wonder if anyone will ever be charged with the killing of civilians.