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.
Who Wants to Work for ICE? They Do.
At a busy hiring expo in Texas, new recruits answer Trump’s call.
Immigration and customs enforcement held a hiring expo this week outside Dallas at a place called the Esports Stadium. Set between the Texas Rangers ballpark and the roller coasters of Six Flags, the arena was built for video-game competitions, and a wall of bright-blue screens welcomed job candidates at the entrance. “With honor and integrity, we will safeguard the American people, our homeland and our values,” one message read. “Start your journey towards a meaningful career in law enforcement.”
Inside the cavernous main hall, organizers had parked a shiny Mustang with stenciled lettering that read defend the homeland. A blinding 90-foot-wide LED display at the center of the stage was lit up with the ICE logo and recruitment slogans. The setup resembled a poker tournament or an ESPN draft night, lending a whiff of excitement and opportunity.
ICE’s pitch for meaning and purpose seemed to draw in many of the applicants I met. Some were military veterans with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan who told me they longed for the camaraderie and sense of belonging they once had. Others said they were bored, or wanted to serve the country, or fill a hole in their life left by a failed marriage or the creeping regrets they felt in middle age after screwing up in their 20s.
ICE had advertised same-day offers to qualified candidates, especially those with prior military service or law-enforcement experience, and a $50,000 bonus to sweeten the pot. In the parking lot were license plates from New Mexico, Tennessee, and as far away as New Jersey. Hundreds of applicants began lining up before the doors opened at 8 a.m., many in suits, with résumés and diplomas in hand.
Women's Professional Baseball League Launching in 2026
The league is holding its tryouts in Washington, D.C.
Victoria Ruelas was 12 years old when she made history as the first American girl to play in the Little League World Series.
That was in 1989. And while Ruelas is proud of how far women in sports have come since her childhood, she can't help but wish there were more opportunities for them to shine. Especially in baseball, where opportunities beyond youth leagues have so often required girls to take unusual paths, most of them alongside men.
“We keep saying how much strides we’re making,” Ruelas said. "But they’re so slow in coming. It just should be faster.
“I get excited when I see girls playing and getting to go to the Little League World Series every year. But to still be one here, one there — that’s upsetting to me. There’s so much more of us out there that play.”
Ruelas and many other women have carved out their own spaces in baseball over the years. Now, the wait for something more unifying is on the horizon with next year's launch of the Women's Professional Baseball League.
The league is holding its tryouts in Washington D.C. While baseball stars like former Little League phenom Mo'ne Davis and USA baseball women's national team player Kelsie Whitmore are already signed to the WPBL, the league's tryouts are open to all women.
That has made way for competitors of all ages to chase their dream of playing professionally. For many, the tryouts are one of the first times they've seen so many women's baseball players in one place.
States Are Tracking ‘Impostor Nurses,’ a Growing Problem Since the Pandemic
Aliases in different states. A contract under a classmate’s name. Experts say a challenging form of health-care fraud is endangering patients.
On April 5, Pennsylvania State Police troopers made what they thought was a routine traffic stop of a driver who turned without signaling. Instead, they say they uncovered a multistate web of deceit.
When the troopers approached the Mercedes SUV south of Pittsburgh, the driver provided an expired vehicle registration that did not match her ID, according to an incident report. After getting a search warrant, troopers said they found multiple forms of identification, including access badges for health care facilities, as well as patient logs and prescription medication not in the driver’s name.
Investigators say the discovery led them to conclude that the driver, Shannon Nicole Womack, had used about 20 aliases and seven Social Security numbers to get hired as a nurse in Pennsylvania, and may have committed similar crimes in other states. Womack, who has been detained in Washington County Prison, was charged with identity theft, forgery, endangering the welfare of care and other charges.
The case is not unique: In recent years, authorities in numerous states have reported people falsely claiming to be licensed nurses or working in positions that require a nursing license without valid credentials. Some regulatory bodies use the term “impostor nurse” to refer to these individuals and maintain “impostor lists” to try to prevent them from working in other states.
Penn & Teller’s Greatest Trick: Making Us Think They’re Not Friends
As their magic act hits 50 years, they’re bigger than ever. They say their secret is not to socialize. But misdirection is also their love language.
Can a magician be too old to die?
This was the question under debate backstage at the Penn & Teller Theater in Las Vegas after Teller, the silent half of the most famous living double act, suggested bringing back one of his favorite tricks.
The duo first performed it on “Saturday Night Live” in 1985 when Penn Jillette, now 70, locked Teller, 77, inside a phone-booth-size tank, filled to the top with water. Then he promised to not let him out until Jillette guessed a card picked by an audience member. It’s a race to avoid drowning, and the trick is intricately plotted, with escalating tension, several reversals and one dramatic return from the dead.
Even though it’s been a crowd-pleaser, Jillette said he thought they had aged out of it. “The suffering of a young man is heroic,” he told his partner in mid-June. “For an older man, it can be sad.”
Teller countered politely that little physicality was required of him, so surviving was not “a heroic gesture.” He described it this way: “It’s about the partnership,” he said, referring to their collaboration, which like “Jaws” and “Saturday Night Live,” reached half a century this year. “That might be an idea strengthened over time.”
A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In.
More people are turning to general-purpose chatbots for emotional support. At first, Adam Raine, 16, used ChatGPT for schoolwork, but then he started discussing plans to end his life.
When Adam Raine died in April at age 16, some of his friends did not initially believe it.
Adam loved basketball, Japanese anime, video games and dogs — going so far as to borrow a dog for a day during a family vacation to Hawaii, his younger sister said. But he was known first and foremost as a prankster. He pulled funny faces, cracked jokes and disrupted classes in a constant quest for laughter. Staging his own death as a hoax would have been in keeping with Adam’s sometimes dark sense of humor, his friends said.
But it was true. His mother found Adam’s body on a Friday afternoon. He had hanged himself in his bedroom closet. There was no note, and his family and friends struggled to understand what had happened.
Seeking answers, his father, Matt Raine, a hotel executive, turned to Adam’s iPhone, thinking his text messages or social media apps might hold clues about what had happened. But instead, it was ChatGPT where he found some, according to legal papers. The chatbot app lists past chats, and Mr. Raine saw one titled “Hanging Safety Concerns.” He started reading and was shocked. Adam had been discussing ending his life with ChatGPT for months.
Related, sadly: A Troubled Man, His Chatbot and a Murder-Suicide in Old Greenwich: “Erik, you’re not crazy.” ChatGPT fueled a 56-year-old tech industry veteran’s paranoia, encouraging his suspicions that his mother was plotting against him. (The Wall Street Journal)
The Dutch Are Quietly Shifting Towards a Four-Day Work Week
The Netherlands serves as a case study for the advantages and trade-offs of reduced hours in the workplace.
The experience of the Netherlands suggests that a four-day week isn’t nirvana. But nor is it a fast-track ticket to economic ruin. The real lesson, I think, is that it is perfectly possible to arrange and distribute work in many different ways. It is just about the trade-offs you are willing to make, both within the economic realm, and beyond it. Speaking of going beyond economics, one underplayed argument for the four-day week is surely this: children in the Netherlands rank as the happiest in the rich world.
Man Who Faked His Own Death Sentenced to 89 Days in Jail
This is sort of a local story, but I always wonder about this sort of thing: Rather than go through this whole elaborate charade to get out of a marriage, why not just own up and file for divorce?
A Wisconsin man who faked his own death in Green Lake last year has been sentenced to 89 days in jail — the same amount of time he evaded law enforcement.
During his sentencing hearing Tuesday, Ryan Borgwardt was also ordered to pay $30,000 for costs related to the investigation into his disappearance.
The 45-year-old, who was living in Watertown at the time, carried out an elaborate plan to make it appear he drowned when he flipped his kayak in Green Lake. But while a search for his body went on for weeks, Borgwardt had actually fled to Europe, leaving behind his wife and children.
According to the criminal complaint, Borgwardt told law enforcement he paddled a kayak onto the lake with an inflatable, child-sized boat. After he overturned the kayak, he took the boat back to land where he had stashed an electric bicycle near the boat launch.
He rode the bike to Madison, then caught a bus to Canada, then a flight to a “country in Asia,” according to the complaint. He met with an adult woman after landing at the airport.
He allegedly told authorities: “Everything hinged on me dying in the lake.”
man who faked his own death: made me think of the song by Paul Simon '50 Ways to Leave Your Lover'
It feels like the administration is building a private military force with the high-dollar recruiting efforts. The article also noted “same-day” offers, indicating minimal background checks for weapon carrying, masked law enforcement officers.
Just as disconcerting is what I’ve read regarding a plan to lower FBI standards, requiring no college degree for new recruits and reducing the training from 18 to 8 weeks.
“Current and former agents tell the Times that the plan appears to shift the FBI’s focus to street crime and being more of a police force, instead of taking on complicated cases involving financial fraud, public corruption, and national security.”
https://www.fedagent.com/news/fbi-to-lower-recruiting-standards-cut-college-degree-requirement-and-training-time
Is green the new brown shirt?