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.
Go Ask Alice Why Tech Start-Ups Are Spending Big on Hype Videos
A Mad Hatter and a giant rabbit sit around a table discussing an A.I. start-up. This is normal behavior around the Bay Area these days
On a Monday afternoon in an Oakland, Calif., warehouse, actors dressed as Alice and the Mad Hatter and a man wearing a giant rabbit head sat around a table on a black-and-white checkered floor. The Mad Hatter lifted a silver teapot and said in a high-pitched voice, “What is our A.I. search strategy?” A director called cut and told the actor to look straight into the camera lens in the next take. Like many things in the Bay Area these days, the surrealist scene on a bustling set of about 20 film crew members was funded by an artificial intelligence start-up. Daydream, an A.I. marketing services company, orchestrated the $80,000 video shoot to announce a $15 million funding round in a social media post.
San Francisco’s young A.I. companies have shelled out tens of thousands of dollars for film crews and camera equipment to make highly produced hype videos for social media. Fueled by a venture capital funding frenzy, founders are aiming for memorable — maybe even viral — videos to help recruit talent and simply get attention in an increasingly crowded field. And many of these A.I. start-ups are embracing traditional video production, rather than doing it on the cheap with A.I., because they don’t want them to look unprofessional.
Link: New York Times (Natallie Rocha)
These Migrants Want to Self-Deport. Getting Out Is Harder Than They Thought.
Some struggle with resources or clearance to depart: ‘Help me leave here please’
The encounter at John F. Kennedy International Airport was the latest setback for the Venezuelan mother of two living in New York City. She had been trying to use several pathways to leave the U.S. since her husband was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at a routine court hearing in September—and her pregnancy due date was weeks away. But her paperwork was a mess. It appeared to be easier to get into the U.S. than to get out. More migrants including Parra, 29 years old, are relenting under pressure from the Trump administration to self-deport before immigration authorities detain them. The problem she and other migrants have found is that self-deporting isn’t always as simple as it sounds without the money, documents or legal clearance to do so.
The administration created a mobile app called CBP Home, which migrants including Parra have used to register and state their intention to depart. It is supposed to help migrants book government-funded plane tickets. The Department of Homeland Security has spent tens of millions of dollars on an ad blitz urging immigrants to self-deport and has touted a one-time, $2,600 payment should immigrants successfully leave. When Parra was desperately explaining her situation to the agent at Kennedy Airport, she realized her paperwork problem. Parra learned that Customs and Border Protection had emailed a reservation but never purchased the tickets because she didn’t send complete, valid travel documents. Day-of flight tickets would cost $1,300—money she didn’t have. “I’m sorry,” one agent said. “It’s not going to work.”
Link: Wall Street Journal (Multiple reporters)
I Turned Off My Phone for a Month and Used a Landline
No texts, no Instagram, no subway Slack
A few months ago, my phone started feeling like too much. Texts from group chats piled up like unread emails, my Instagram feed was mostly sports-betting ads, and even “Do not disturb” mode brought little respite. Then on January 14, there was a nationwide Verizon outage that knocked out cell service for many New Yorkers, including me. For about six hours, I had a taste of the analog life. The next day, I bought a landline and set out to use that for a few weeks — no texts, no FaceTime, no Instagram, no Slack, no nothing. I call Spectrum and tell the representative I’d like to install a landline in my apartment. “This would be for a business account, correct?” he asks. “No, this would be for a home phone,” I say. It’ll be an extra $15 a month, with the first month free, and all I need is the physical phone to plug into my modem.
After a week of traveling, I expected to come home to a ton of messages on my answering machine. I had three. This was a little disappointing, and I can feel the novelty of the landline wearing off. Some of the film photos from the wedding come back great, and I wish I could share them with my family and friends — almost in an effort to stay relevant in their lives. I have a creeping urge to post pictures of the ceremony in Hawaii to Instagram, which would involve breaking my streak. A month feels like an appropriate time to end the experiment, so I turn my phone on. It’s alive once more, and it feels strange. The screen itself seems foreign and extra bright. I open Instagram to a home screen of red notification dots. I post the photos of me and my friend and his wife at their wedding and get a stream of likes and DM-inbox buzzes. At the office, my co-workers want me to check how many unread messages I have. Factoring in ones from group chats, it’s 1,947. Overwhelmed, I turn my phone off again.
Link: New York Magazine (Multiple reporters)
New Taliban Decree on Divorce Formalizes Child Marriage, U.N. Warns
A new Afghan law requires girls to wait until puberty before seeking to get out of a marriage. It also requires mediation for women seeking to escape an abusive husband
A decree published by the Taliban government in Afghanistan has drawn condemnation from the United Nations and human rights groups for implicitly recognizing child marriage and further eroding women’s rights. The Taliban government, which has imposed some of the world’s toughest restrictions on women and girls since taking over Afghanistan in 2021, has rejected the accusations. The decree regulates divorce in Afghanistan, including defining the conditions for the separation of girls who were married before puberty. Article 5 states: “Upon reaching puberty, the minor has the option to dissolve the marriage” that a relative may have contracted for her. Puberty generally occurs between ages 8 and 13, according to the U.S. National Institute for Health.
The decree also stipulates that if a girl does not object to her arranged marriage as she reaches puberty, that will be seen as consent. Adult women — and boys — must verbally consent. “By devoting a chapter on separation for girls who reach puberty and who are married, the decree implies that child marriage is permitted,” the U.N. mission in Afghanistan said in a statement. “It also allows for a girl’s silence as she reaches puberty to be interpreted as consent to a marriage.” The path to divorce for women remains a difficult one. The decree states that a woman can file for divorce if her husband mistreats her — similar to what was in theory already available. But the path for a woman to obtain a divorce is tortuous; Afghan men retain a unilateral right to divorce.
Link: New York Times (Elian Peltier)
The Strength You Gain by Not Taking Offense
By Arthur C. Brooks
Unless you inhabit a hermit cave with no internet access, you’ll know that we live in the Age of Offense. With high levels of polarization and innumerable ways to broadcast one’s every thought to strangers far and wide, it is easier than ever to lob insults and to denigrate ideological foes. Not surprisingly, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center study, 47 percent of Americans believe that people saying things that are “very offensive” to others is a major problem in the country today, whereas only 11 percent say it is not a problem. You might conclude that the solution is for people to stop offending others—good luck with that!—but consider another statistic in the same poll: A larger percentage of Americans (62 percent) says another big problem is “people being too easily offended by things others say.”
The foundational study on the psychology of taking offense—one still frequently cited today—was written in 1976 by the psychologist Wolfgang Zander. He argued that we get offended in three stages: First, we identify when we’re insulted or harshly contradicted; second, we assess how extreme the offense is; finally, we respond emotionally or in some behavioral way. Say, for example, a colleague at work says in a meeting, in front of your boss, that your latest proposal is stupid. You identify this as a contradiction of your ideas; you assess this as mildly annoying; you decide to register your unhappiness in an appropriate manner with your colleague after the meeting.
Link: The Atlantic (Arthur C. Brooks) Backup: https://archive.ph/g2JH6
What Ethiopian running says about the limits of human ability
Gojjam wipes a streak of vomit from the corner of his mouth and turns to his friend Zeleke
Gojjam wipes a streak of vomit from the corner of his mouth and turns to his friend Zeleke. “I did your turn at the front today,” he says, “and my soul almost came out.” He squirts water from a bottle into his mouth and spits. “Leading is hard. It’s like carrying someone else’s burden.” The two athletes sit on the side of the Chinese-built road that leads southwest into Oromia from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital city. Beyond the tumult of cars and buses and the occasional horse-drawn cart, farmland stretches to the horizon in every direction. They have just run 25 km with 14 other athletes at a pace designed to prepare them for an upcoming marathon. Before they started, their coach, Messeret, carefully divided the responsibility of leading sections of the run between them, emphasising the importance of doing their “duty” as pacemakers and invoking them to “share their energy” with their teammates.
In 2025, athletes from Ethiopia and the nearby East African nations of Kenya, Uganda, Eritrea and Tanzania filled 69 and 74 of the top-100 spots in the World Athletics marathon rankings for men and women, respectively. This is an extraordinary level of dominance, with few parallels in global sport. In these countries, distance running expertise is seen as something that is intuitive, learnt from others, honed through experience, and deeply dependent upon a group training dynamic. Increasingly, though, this approach goes against the grain of cutting-edge sports science, which advocates the monitoring of an ever-increasing number of physiological variables and individualised, precisely engineered training.
Link: Aeon (Michael Crawley and Geoff Burns)
Trump Appointees Push $250 Banknote With His Portrait
The printing director who resisted the effort said she was reassigned last month. “The buck stopped here,” she wrote in her goodbye
Trump administration officials have pressed the office responsible for printing the nation’s money to design a $250 bill featuring the president’s portrait, according to four current and former employees, in what would be the first appearance of a living person on U.S. currency in more than 150 years. Starting last year, two political appointees at the Treasury Department repeatedly urged staff at the agency’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing to prepare prototypes of the note, according to the employees, who said the move raised concerns because federal law currently allows only deceased people to appear on bills. No living person has appeared on U.S. currency since 1866, when it was outlawed after the image of a mid-level Treasury bureaucrat showed up on a 5-cent note.
The director of the printing bureau, Patricia “Patty” Solimene, was abruptly reassigned from her post by Treasury management on April 27, writing the next day in an email to colleagues that she was leaving with a “heavy heart.” She wrote in her goodbye email, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, that she had been reassigned to another job in the Treasury Department and that her departure was “not my choice.”
“The buck stopped here,” she wrote.
Link: Washington Post (Jonathan O’Connell) Backup: https://archive.ph/E93t3
“…federal law currently allows only deceased people to appear on bills.“
Why is this even a conversation???
Congress can’t agree on anything, much less pass a bill overturning a federal law. Trump will likely keep firing people until someone creates this nonsense in spite of the law.
I offer up my toilet seat for his image if trump wants to pony up some cash. He can even paint it gold for the right amount.
Washington Post recap of 5,000+ current reader comments on the $250 bill story:
“Conversation summary:
The comments express strong disapproval and ridicule towards the idea of featuring Donald Trump's image on a $250 bill, with many highlighting his legal troubles and perceived vanity. Commenters criticize Trump's focus on self-aggrandizement rather than addressing national issues, and they express a desire for political change, often using humor and sarcasm to convey their disdain. There is a recurring theme of questioning the legality and appropriateness of placing a living person, especially one with Trump's controversies, on U.S. currency.”