Ghost towns in Greece
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.
The World’s Best Athletes Tell Her Everything
At just 32 years old, Taylor Rooks might just be the most in-demand sideline reporter across the NBA and NFL. We tagged along with her to an Eagles game—and talked to friends Saquon Barkley, Jayson Tatum, and Jack Harlow—to find out her secret.
It’s Thursday night in Philadelphia; the Eagles and the Washington Commanders are about to square off at Lincoln Financial Field, and I’m just trying to keep up along the sidelines. It’s bright, and it’s loud. Bone rattling, even, thanks to the stadium’s pumped-up pregame playlist. But the biggest star on the field isn’t padded up. It’s not A. J. Brown or Terry McLaurin. Instead, it’s 32-year-old sideline reporter Taylor Rooks.
In mid-November, it’s roughly 30 degrees outside, yet Rooks is comfortable in a cream, checkered, skirted suit and jet-black heels. Jayden Daniels and former Super Bowl winner Malcolm Jenkins walk over just to say hello—not the other way around. So do some of the players’ parents. I even spot a few members of the Commanders training staff who are more nervous to ask her for a photo than quarterback Jalen Hurts. She’s a magnet. Rooks can’t take three steps in any direction without pulling in another familiar face. “It’s always like this,” one of Rooks’s photographers tells me.
But as fun as this sideline party is, Rooks still has a job to do tonight. Thursday Night Football is airing her exclusive interview with Eagles running back Saquon Barkley during what is easily the greatest stretch of his football-playing career. The week prior, Barkley wowed football fans by performing a reverse hurdle over a defender. The move looked straight out of a video game—it simply wasn’t possible before he did it. Naturally, Barkley went to Rooks for the story. Who else? (Esquire)
Netflix’s Extraordinary Parental Leave Was Part of Its Culture. That’s Over.
Employees worry the pullback and other new restrictions mean the entertainment giant is losing the identity that fueled its success.
Netflix made headlines nearly a decade ago when it unveiled one of corporate America’s most generous parental-leave benefits, pledging to give new moms and dads unlimited time off in their child’s first year.
It was a promise Netflix couldn’t keep.
The policy was in line with a core company value, “freedom and responsibility,” the idea that employees can be trusted to set their own boundaries. But more staffers than expected took full advantage of the benefit, and Netflix ultimately found it unsustainable.
The company has spent the past few years walking back the leave policy, issuing vague and sometimes conflicting guidance internally without explicitly retracting the one-year benefit, according to internal communications reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, as well as interviews with current and former employees. Taking more than six months of leave is now widely understood to be an unwise career move.
Staff have seized on the parental-leave policy as a stark example of how they think Netflix is losing what makes it special. “Netflix always had a different approach than other companies in that they said it’s important for employees to be with their babies,” said Clara Guimarães, a former São Paulo, Brazil-based production employee for Netflix. “Now it feels like it’s more about the business needs.” (The Wall Street Journal)
Months Before C.E.O.’s Killing, the Suspect Went Silent. Where Was He?
New details are emerging about Luigi Mangione’s growing impatience with “a capitalist society” and his search for refuge in the mountains of Japan.
After a drizzly hike through one of Japan’s lush mountain ranges earlier this year, Luigi Mangione, a computer engineer in his mid-20s who had set off on a long solo trip to Asia, paused to record a voice message to a friend he had met while traveling abroad.
Making his way that day along a river gorge in the Nara region, Mr. Mangione had fled his day-to-day life in Hawaii to soak in hot springs, meditate, catch up on books and do some writing of his own.
“I want some time to Zen out,” Mr. Mangione said in the recorded message on April 27, his voice quiet and contemplative.
It would be one of his last communications before he abruptly cut ties with a wide range of friends and family, who eventually set out on a desperate hunt to track him down. Seven months later, Mr. Mangione emerged from his isolation as the suspect in the brazen assassination of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, on a sidewalk in Manhattan.
Police investigators have been scrambling to trace Mr. Mangione’s movements not only in the days before the Dec. 4 shooting, but also in the months that preceded it — a period that has been shrouded in mystery.
But in new records and messages reviewed by The New York Times, along with interviews with a wide range of people who knew Mr. Mangione, a more complete picture has emerged of a young man struggling with debilitating medical problems and increasingly disillusioned with the society he lived in. (New York Times)
Greece’s Ghost Towns Offer a Glimpse of a Country Struggling With ‘Existential’ Population Collapse
Economists warn that population decline is now putting a major strain on society – with not enough young workers to grow the economy and support the elderly.
Lasta, GREECE — There’s nobody around anymore to man Saint George cafe in Lasta, a mountainous village in Greece’s Peloponnese region.
Instead, there’s an honor system — just take a drink, leave a donation and soak up the relics of a bygone era.
Photos of lively residents on the walls belie the reality outside, where a deserted square, abandoned school and derelict houses offer an eerie glimpse into the future of a country at risk of population collapse.
Lasta is just one of hundreds of depopulated or abandoned “ghost” towns and villages scattered across Greece, in an all too visible marker of years of declining births, economic hardship and mass emigration.
Greece is home to one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe: At 1.3, it is half that recorded in 1950 and well below the 2.1 required for population replacement. (CNBC)
‘Executed, Executed, Dead From Sickness’: The Grim Records From Syria’s Notorious Prison
Search for loved ones in jail that hanged up to 50 people a day reopens wounds for families.
Syrians searching for missing loved ones are combing the grounds of the country’s most notorious prison, rifling through lists of detainees and chipping at the concrete floor looking for hidden cells or tombs.
Civilians, militia soldiers, lawyers and a rescue team from Turkey picked through heaps of clothes left in the cellblocks of the military-run Saydnaya prison, and stared at the red rope nooses hanging from a concrete wall behind the building. As many as 50 people were hanged each day in the prison, the State Department said in 2017.
Tens of thousands of people disappeared into the country’s sprawling detention network since the regime of President Bashar al-Assad moved to suppress a 2011 uprising. Rebels opened Saydnaya on Sunday after ousting Assad, freeing detainees and allowing the public to look for the missing.
“Ninety-nine percent of them are dead,” said Ammar Al-Bara, a lawyer in a crisp white shirt and stylish gray coat who said families had asked him to search for their relatives.
He pulled a sheet from a bundle of prison records tucked under one arm, and read from a table of names. “Executed, executed, dead from sickness,” he said, pointing at the list. (The Wall Street Journal)
Hospitals Gave Patients Meds During Childbirth, Then Reported Them For Positive Drug Tests
Mothers were reported after they were given medications used routinely for pain or in epidurals, to reduce anxiety or to manage blood pressure during cesarean sections.
Amairani Salinas was 32 weeks pregnant with her fourth child in 2023 when doctors at a Texas hospital discovered that her baby no longer had a heartbeat. As they prepped her for an emergency cesarean section, they gave her midazolam, a benzodiazepine commonly prescribed to keep patients calm. A day later, the grieving mother was cradling her stillborn daughter when a social worker stopped by her room to deliver another devastating blow: Salinas was being reported to child welfare authorities. A drug test had turned up traces of benzodiazepine — the very medication that staff had administered before wheeling her into surgery.
For Victoria Villanueva, pregnant with her first child, the drug detected in her baby’s system was morphine. Villanueva had arrived at an Indiana hospital at 41 weeks to have her labor induced. To ease the pain of her contractions, doctors gave her narcotics. A day later, a social worker told the new mother: The baby’s meconium — or first bowel movement — had tested positive for opiates. Now, instead of bonding with her baby, Villanueva shook with fear that her newborn could be taken away. “I didn’t even know how to function,” she recalled.
What happened to Salinas and Villanueva are far from isolated incidents. Across the country, hospitals are dispensing medications to patients in labor, only to report them to child welfare authorities when they or their newborns test positive for those very same substances on subsequent drug tests, an investigation by The Marshall Project and Reveal has found. (The Marshall Project)
How an Unknown Chinese Phonemaker Took Over Africa
Shenzhen Transsion Holding has spent years building devices to cater to African consumer tastes.
On a hectic road in Lagos, Nigeria, packed with minibuses and motorized rickshaws, ads for the hottest new tech products are plastered all over a crowded electronics mart. A giant billboard looms above, displaying Tecno Mobile Ltd.’s Camon phones featuring artificial intelligence imaging. There are glass cases facing the sidewalks chock-full of sub-$150 smartphones from Infinix Mobility Ltd. and Itel Mobile Ltd. A wide banner shows off Oraimo SpacePods with earbud audio tuning by Afrobeat superstar Burna Boy.
These brands may not be familiar to most Americans or Europeans, but they’re dominant throughout Africa. They’re also all owned by the same company: the Chinese manufacturer Shenzhen Transsion Holdings Co.
Catering to African consumer habits has been a key focus for Transsion. Over the years it’s developed handsets with multiple slots for SIM cards, because Africans frequently switched telecommunications providers for better service. The company equipped devices with camera sensors that improved photo captures of darker skin tones, as well as robust audio modules for locals who also use their phones as music speakers. “Only when companies truly respect the local culture and tradition in a market could they gain a foothold,” the company’s founder, Zhu Zhaojiang, once told China’s state-backed Global Times. (Bloomberg Businessweek)
Taylor Rooks is an amazing talent and she worked/works very hard to be in the position she is in. There is another thing she carries with her that is not mentioned in the piece, and it's that she LOOKS like a professional, acts like a professional, IS a professional. I worked in football for 25 years, watching the likes of Tracy Wolfson, Pam Oliver, Erin Andrews, Hannah Storm, Leslie Visser and more do their thing with utmost professionalism and knowledge of a game they never played. Then suddenly there was this push for women to be everywhere in the sport, hosting their own shows on ESPN, joining the desk with the rest of the talent for pregame shows and halftime; and the one thing I noticed was that so many were dressed like they were going clubbing. I worked a game one time where the sideline reporter wore a one-sleeve gold satin blouse and leather pants. She may have gotten the players to stop and talk, but I can guarantee that not many took her seriously as a journalist. I know it, I spoke with a few of the veterans about it. One threw his hands up and said, "the network wants what the network wants".
The sad part is, these women do have knowledge of the game, the majority have studied very hard to be where they are, but real sports enthusiasts don't take them seriously because the networks don't. If they did, wardrobe wouldn't put them out there looking like hootchie mamas. They'd be dressed like Taylor Rooks, Tracy Wolfson, Erin Andrews, Pam Oliver and the rest, so it's not a distraction and people actually hear what they're saying. Rooks has everything she needs to be successful for the rest of her career and she looks like she belongs there too.
It’s a shame medical care isn’t focused on prevention—- I venture to say US spends so much because of unhealthy lifestyles —- obesity, diabetes now reaching down to children not just teens, lack of exercise, lack of mental stimulation for all ages, lack of regular sleep, no smoking of anything, no drug use, minimal alcohol use, many more car accidents because we depend on our cars which I think is the hardest of the previous issues to deal with
I’m 74 - my dr focuses on prevention. Not on pills.