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.
Panama Canal Ship Pilot Navigates Tricky Waters, and the U.S.
For over 40 years, Capt. Efraín Hallax, 73, has been steering vessels through the canal, and he has seen it all, from a dictator’s fall to the rise of U.S. interest in retaking the waterway.
Hanging from a ladder attached to the hull of a giant, bobbing tanker, Capt. Efraín Hallax began his climb up to the crew awaiting him atop the Athina, a ship anchored in Panama Bay and third in line to transit the Panama Canal.
The daunting ascent up the shifting ship was nothing new for Captain Hallax, 73. He has been a ship’s pilot in the Panama Canal for over 40 years, responsible for guiding vessels through the trade-critical corridor that connects the Pacific Ocean with the Caribbean Sea.
On this night in February, Captain Hallax reported for work a half-hour before midnight — and just a few hours after President Trump had canceled a call with President José Raúl Mulino of Panama to continue their negotiations over the future of the canal, which the U.S. president wants returned to American control.
The overnight crossing was nothing out of the ordinary for the captain. With about 3 percent of the world’s maritime trade carried through its locks, the Panama Canal is a 24-hour operation.
“Business as usual,” said Captain Hallax. “Always business as usual in the Panama Canal, no matter Christmas, no matter rain, no matter fog, no matter nothing, no matter Trump.”
Navy SEAL. Harvard Doctor. NASA Astronaut. Don’t Tell Mom About This Overachiever.
Jonny Kim’s achievements at age 41 have been a global source of inspiration—and mild dismay.
In half a lifetime, Jonny Kim has achieved the American dream three times over. He was a Navy SEAL. Then he graduated from Harvard Medical School. And on Tuesday, he blasted off as part of his latest act: astronaut.
When novelist Wesley Chu first learned about Kim, a 41-year-old father of three who is also a Navy pilot, his first reaction was awe.
His second: “Thank God my mom is not friends with his mom.”
After word of his feats spread, Kim became a global source of inspiration. And yet, to many of the same people who glance at his résumé and can’t help but compare it to theirs, he has also conjured up a bit of another feeling.
Dismay.
This has been especially true in the Asian-American community, where Kim, the son of South Korean immigrants, has been simultaneously lauded as a hero—and feared, only half-jokingly, as “every Asian kid’s worst nightmare.”
Middle-Aged Man Trading Cards Go Viral in Rural Japan Town
Why kids in Fukuoka are obsessed with collecting cards with middle-aged men on them.
In the small town of Kawara in Fukuoka Prefecture, something unexpected is happening at the Saidosho Community Center. While kids in most parts of Japan are obsessed with Pokémon cards — or perhaps the franchise’s latest smartphone game, Pokémon TCG Pocket — the children of Kawara are clutching to something a little closer to home.
They are playing a trading card game (TCG) where the stars aren’t fantasy creatures, anime heroes or even famous baseball players, but ojisan (middle-aged or older men) from the local community of Saidosho.
The most popular of them all is probably All-Rounder Mr. Fujii (68), a former prison officer turned community volunteer. His card is so sought after that local kids have even started asking him for autographs.
“We wanted to strengthen the connection between the children and the older generations in the community. There are so many amazing people here. I thought it was such a shame that no one knew about them,” creator Eri Miyahara said. “Since the card game went viral, so many kids are starting to look up to these men as heroic figures.”
The Surprising Health Benefits of Swearing
Many of us try to suppress the urge to blurt out an expletive when something goes wrong. But the instinct may actually be useful: Research has found that using profanity can have beneficial effects on people’s stress, anxiety, and depression.
In fact, there are numerous potential physical, psychological, and social perks related to the power of a well-timed F-bomb.
Here are the hidden health perks of swearing that science has uncovered.
You Used to Be Close. But Are You a 'Fringe Friend' Now?
It’s not fun to realize you may be an ‘always welcome but never invited’ pal. But experts say it’s not all bad.
We’re hiding behind a dining table, waiting for the birthday girl to arrive.
The door creaks open. “Surprise!” we shout.
When her shock fades, my friend yells, “I thought the party was tomorrow!”
My heart sinks as I realize she’d planned her own, separate party – and hadn’t invited me.
After a decade of knowing her, I had become her fringe friend – a non-essential pal, the person who’s “always welcome but never invited”, as fellow fringe friends say online.
I shouldn’t have been so surprised. We had grown apart after living in different cities, and our conversations had been feeling awkward and forced. But I still considered her one of my closest friends, so it stung when I realized she no longer prioritized our relationship like I did.
The Locker-Room Playbook for Managing Gen Z Employees
Gen Zers recently overtook baby boomers in the workforce, posing new challenges for business leaders.
Tua Tagovailoa, the 27-year-old quarterback of the Miami Dolphins, wants to throw out his generation’s reputation for being soft. Good thing he has a strong arm.
“Leadership traditionally looked like someone who had the demeanor of authority and demanded respect, and I just don’t think in this generation that works,” he says. “When I get called out for something, I want to know it’s coming from a good place.”
Business leaders sometimes look to sports for tips on winning attitudes and championship work ethics. The real playbook worth borrowing now, more than ever, is about managing Gen Zers.
They recently became a larger share of the American workforce than baby boomers, and another crop of college graduates is on the way this spring.
Locker rooms offer a preview of what’s coming to offices because they are rare workplaces where most employees are part of Gen Z already. If anyone has figured out how to motivate, relate to—and even learn from—this cohort, it’s the coaches and sports executives whose livelihoods depend on it.
Sit-to-Stand: The Simple Test That Reveals How You're Aging
The sit-to-stand test takes just 30 seconds to complete, but its results can provide profound insights into your health.
Getting out of a chair may seem too trivial a task to pay much attention to, but your ability to do so actually reveals a great deal about your health. To assess this, doctors use the sit-to-stand test (STS), which measures how many times you can rise to a standing position from seated within 30 seconds. It's commonly performed in GP surgeries, or community settings when screening for health issues amongst older people, but it can also easily be performed at home.
"It's a really helpful test, because it tells us so much about how well people are functioning," says Jugdeep Dhesi, a consultant geriatrician at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust in London and professor of geriatric medicine at Kings College London, in the UK. "It tells us about their strength, their balance and their flexibility. We know that there's some studies that suggest that it can help to inform whether people are at risk of things like falls, cardiovascular issues or even at a higher risk of dying."
All you need to do the test at home is a chair with a straight back and no arm rests, and a stopwatch or timer (most modern phones have this function).
I just read the following in a 4/3 David Brooks column. I share this excerpt here, not as a dig on Trump, but as an interesting point of view that actually seems to align with what I believe is Bill’s intention with his newsletter.
————————————————-
Trump is building walls. His trade policies obstruct not only the flow of goods but also the flow of ideas, contacts, technology and friendships as well. His immigration policies do the same. He assaults the institutions and communities most involved in international exchange: scientific researchers, universities, the diplomatic corps, foreign aid agencies and international alliances like NATO.
The essence of the Trump agenda might be: We don’t like those damn foreigners.
The problem is that great nations throughout the history of Western civilization have been crossroads nations. They have been places where people from all over met, exchanged ideas and came up with new ones together. In his book “Cities in Civilization,” Peter Hall looked at the most innovative places down through the centuries: Athens in the fifth century B.C., Florence in the 15th century, Vienna from the late 18th century to the eve of World War I, New York from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, the Bay Area later on.
They were all meeting spots for people from different nations. Hall writes, “People meet, people talk, people listen to each other’s music and each other’s words, dance each other’s dances, take in each other’s thoughts. And so, by accidents of geography, sparks may be struck and something new come out of the encounter.” This, he continues, happens in junction points, places that encourage global interaction. Such places have common characteristics: They are unstuffy, un-classbound, nonhierarchical, informal.“
Thank you for sharing the Sit to Standing Bill. I am female and 68 and was curious to see how many I could complete - 18. Most certainly got my heart rate going 😊