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.
Happy 250th Birthday, America!
I hope all my American readers have a fantastic day today (and tomorrow), and that everyone can set aside our differences for a weekend and celebrate!
Also at the suggestion of my right-hand-man, Tom From Maine … What better way to celebrate our American story than with Life Story Magic? No offer code needed. Just click through—and support both LSM and Understandably!
The Family Keeping Watch Over a 52-Year-Old Pot of Soup
Three generations in Bangkok have tended the same “mother stock” for over half a century.
The 52-year-old broth is four years older than its current guardian, Nattapong Kaweenuntawong. The restaurateur is the third generation of his family to run Wattana Panich, famed for the geriatric “mother stock” that forms the backbone of its signature beef noodle soup.
“We almost never take vacations,” Kaweenuntawong said. “I can’t leave the broth alone for long.”
William Foo, a self-described beef noodle connoisseur, has sampled versions in Taiwan, Vietnam, Australia, Thailand and his homeland of Malaysia. The 67-year-old said he made a point of visiting Wattana Panich while on vacation, intrigued by the longevity of the mother stock, which he likened to caring for a sourdough starter.
“They’re both like, ‘Feed me, feed me!’” Foo said. He ranked the soup among the two best bowls he has ever tasted.
Link: Wall Street Journal
Penalty Shootouts at the World Cup Are a Drama of ‘Inhumane’ Pressure
As knockout games multiply, players and researchers describe the psychological toll of the penalty spot.
The World Cup is in the lose-and-go-home stage of the tournament and the pressure keeps rising with every minute of every match.
The biggest pressure cooker of them all: the penalty kick shootout. Exhausted players and goalkeepers face off in a tense one-on-one confrontation that carries the hopes and dreams of entire nations.
That kind of pressure can reach “inhumane” levels, almost all of it focused on the penalty takers, said Geir Jordet, a professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences and author of the book, “Pressure: Lessons from the Psychology of the Penalty Shootout.” “In our research, the only emotion everyone agrees is present is anxiety,” Jordet said.
Morocco keeper Yassine Bounou did something critically different. On the decisive save against the Netherlands, he moved to his right while standing up. By staying upright, Bounou used his left hand to easily swat away the kick from Crysencio Summerville, who was shooting for the upper corner. Had Bounou dived, the ball would have easily found the net.
Link: AP (Jim Vertuno)
How American Independence Might Have Been Avoided and the World Transformed
A counterfactual history explores what might have happened had British ministers handled the American colonies differently in the 1760s and ‘70s
Winston Churchill’s coffin was carried down the aisle of the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York, the city where he had made his brilliant and idiosyncratic career.
Having considered the twin parliaments in Westminster and New York, he naturally chose the bigger of the two. But the long peace of the first half of the 20th century, when neither Germany nor any rival dared challenge the mighty transatlantic behemoth of the British-American Union, denied Churchill the full expression of his talents and any chance of high office.
All of the above, as you might have guessed, is a flight of fancy beginning from the premise that America did not declare independence from Britain exactly 250 years ago on July 4, 1776.
Counterfactual history risks veering into whimsy, but this starting point is entirely plausible. Historians generally agree that, no matter how it might seem on this anniversary, there was nothing inevitable about America declaring independence in 1776.
Link: The Telegraph (David Blair) Backup: https://archive.ph/2InsH
A.I. Is Reshaping the Economy. Good Luck Measuring How.
Economists can’t agree on whether artificial intelligence is destroying jobs or creating them, and the data keeps sending contradictory signals
Pretty much everyone agrees that artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape the economy in the coming decades. But no one is sure what effect the technology is having right now.
According to some measures, A.I. is contributing to high unemployment rates among new graduates and might already have destroyed tens of thousands of jobs. Other sources suggest companies might actually be adding workers as a result of the technology.
In one study, economists at Northwestern University and American University found that when they used different exposure measures, those could influence not just the scale of A.I.’s effect on jobs but the direction. A.I. was hurting employment according to some measures, and helping according to others.
“It’s like going to the doctor and getting three different diagnoses for the same condition,” said Michelle Yin, a Northwestern University economist who was one of the study’s authors.
Link: New York Times (Ben Casselman)
Trump Made $1 Billion on Crypto Deals While His Fans Lost a Fortune
A financial disclosure shows the president profited handsomely from crypto ventures even as most retail investors in his tokens are underwater
Morten Christensen made a big bet on digital tokens sold by the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial last year, hoping that a surge in value might be enough to help him retire. Instead, the value of those tokens tanked.
While Christensen and many like him lost big, the president made a fortune, netting $800 million from that crypto project, according to a financial disclosure he filed this week.
“In crypto, people say a game is a game,” the digital-asset entrepreneur said. “He played a better game than I did.”
Roughly two-thirds of investors in Trump’s memecoin are currently in the red, according to crypto data provider Nansen, which tracks 1.48 million crypto wallets that bought the token since its January 2025 launch. Many fans spent a few thousand on Trump coins while the biggest spenders shelled out millions.
Nansen’s analysis of 26,663 wallets shows that 85% of World Liberty’s $WLFI token buyers in the secondary market are underwater.
Link: Wall Street Journal
Immigrant Arrests Surge to 10,000 in 5 Days as ICE Clamps Down
A quieter but much faster enforcement campaign has roughly doubled daily arrest numbers and is sowing fear in immigrant communities
Federal immigration officials have detained more than 10,000 people in the last five days, a major surge that has stemmed from a push within Immigration and Customs Enforcement to increase arrest rates.
ICE officials were told that the White House wanted an increase in arrests, according to three officials with knowledge of the conversations. One of the officials said that it was unclear how long the pace could continue, but that ICE officials had been told that 2,000 arrests a day was the new standard for enforcement.
One of her clients, Arturo, a 48-year-old Mexican man, was arrested in Salt Lake City on his way to a soccer game on Sunday, according to his wife, Veronica. She said the arrest had shattered their family. “They’re getting people — be very careful,” her husband told her from ICE detention, she recalled through an interpreter. She said her 13-year-old son was traumatized by the arrest of his father, who had worked most days of the week building furniture before his arrest, she added.
Link: New York Times (Hamed Aleaziz)
U.S.A.I.D. Cuts Killed People. That’s the Truth.
After Elon Musk publicly denied that any child died as a result of dismantling U.S.A.I.D., a columnist offers names.
Jibia was a 10-year-old girl, ranking third out of 58 students in her fourth-grade class in Rwamwanja, Uganda. Aid cuts meant that the local clinic ran out of $2 bed nets to protect from mosquitoes, as well as anti-malaria medicines. Jibia died of malaria last July, her mother told me outside the family home.
Medical records confirmed that, and health workers told me that she would have been fine without the aid cuts: Replacing her tattered bed net with a new one could have prevented malaria, and in any case drugs would have helped her to recover promptly.
Yamah Freeman hemorrhaged while pregnant with her third child in her village in Liberia.
The United States had provided ambulances to the local hospital, but the aid cuts under Elon Musk and President Trump meant that the ambulances had no fuel. The strongest young men in the village placed her on their shoulders and raced down the path toward town, shouting encouragement to her as they ran, but she bled to death along the way.
Her parents and sister told me about this, and I visited her grave.
Link: New York Times (Nicholas Kristof)
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend. Just to save you scrolling all the way to the top, here’s the Life Story Magic offer again. See you in the comments!