Goodbye, Tinder; Hello, Strava!
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.
Yes, it’s still here. I asked last week, and of the more than 200+ people who have replied, almost all asked to keep FFA going. So, I’m going to continue it, at least for the foreseeable future.
Want to Shop With the Ultra Rich? The Entry Fee Is $12,000
And that doesn’t even cover the cost of the clothes. Inside the world of members-only personal shopping.
Icolas Bijan is a natural-born Yes Man. You want him to custom-upholster your dune buggy? He’ll do it. Dry-clean your pasta-sauce-stained silk jacket? A courier is on the way, sir. On the desk of his sun-dappled Beverly Hills office sits a plaque that reads: It can be done.
“My whole life, I’ve been trained to say yes. Every request, every customer,” Bijan says, sitting in his wood-paneled studio just five minutes off Rodeo Drive. When Bijan heard I was without a car in the public-transportation desert that is Los Angeles, he offered to lend me his own 1971 Porsche for the day. (I declined.)
The medical world has concierge doctors. The golf world has elitist ivy-walled clubs. NB44 is just that approach, but for the clothing world. Behind its closed doors, members get an all-in-one packaging of styling, networking, shipping, bespoke designs and even dry-cleaning. The cost is steep, but for 1 percent of the 1 percent, it’s a convenience worth the price.
Bijan’s father was Bijan Pakzad, a larger-than-life Iranian immigrant who founded House of Bijan in 1976 as an appointment-only Rodeo Drive temple of $65,000 croc-skin luggage, $15,000 vicuña coats and $120,000 chinchilla bedspreads.
Today, the younger Bijan is 33 and trying to slip free from his father’s long shadow with an even more exclusive proposition: a members-only apparel brand. NB44, which he launched in 2021, costs $12,000 a year to join—a fee that doesn’t cover a single item of clothing.
He believes his dad would be proud. “What I’m doing today is the 2024 version of what he did when he was my age,” he says.
Why Children Perceive Time Slower Than Adults
Children's perception of time is relatively understudied. Learning to see time through their eyes may be fundamental to a happier human experience.
My household is absorbed in debate over when time goes the fastest or slowest.
"Slowest in the car!" yells my son.
"Never!" replies my daughter. "I'm too busy for time to go slow, but maybe on weekends when we are on the sofa watching movies."
There's some consensus too; they both agree that the days after Christmas and their birthdays dawdle by gloomily as it dawns on them they have to wait another 365 days to celebrate once more. Years seem to drag on endlessly at their age.
The $100,000 Electric Truck Market is Here. A Guide to Pickups From Tesla, GM, Rivian and Ford
DETROIT – Tesla, General Motors, Rivian Automotive and Ford Motor have created a new market in the U.S. automotive industry of pricey, powerful and precarious electric pickup trucks that sell for $100,000 or more.
Just five years ago, the idea of a customer paying six figures for a pickup truck — historically a work vehicle meant for hauling and towing — was cause for national headlines. But it has quickly become normal, as automakers attempt to increase profits on traditional trucks and simply make a profit on electric ones.
“Customers are willing to spend, so automakers are going to give it to them,” said Stephanie Brinley, principal automotive analyst at S&P Global Mobility. “In general, pickup trucks getting more equipment, better features and better materials really just reflects general consumer attitude of wanting more.”
But unlike $100,000 traditional pickup trucks with internal combustion engines that offer superior capabilities compared with their lower-priced counterparts, electric trucks have higher price tags in part because of their technologies, including the costly batteries needed to power the vehicles.
Goodbye Tinder, Hello Strava: Have ‘Hobby’ Apps Become the New Social Networks?
Millions are rejecting the culture-war hotspots of the major social media sites in favour of apps dedicated to activities they enjoy, while bonding with their fellow users
Singletons looking to shack up with their soulmates online have relied on two key routes in the past decade or so: take your chance on dating apps, or befriend as many mutuals as possible on social media, in the hope that you find the one.
But some have found a third way, using services such as Goodreads and Strava to meet partners with whom they hope to spend the rest of their lives. Those couples proved to be trendsetters. So-called hobby apps – built around activites such as running, reading or movie-going – are having a moment, and not just for love.
It’s all part of a broader movement as people grow tired of the “digital town square” offered on Twitter/X and other social media platforms. At a time when many are abandoning Elon Musk’s social network over his attitude to “free speech” (which some see as “amplifying hate”), competing apps such as Bluesky and Threads are having a resurgence in users.
It’s Texas 60 Miles From North Korea: the U.S. Military’s Largest Overseas Base
Rock stars get to see more of the world than most of us, but when members of the quintessential 2000s’ rock band Hoobastank jetted into the US military base of Camp Humphreys in South Korea, they were struck by the familiarity.
“When we came in through the gates, I was like ‘dude, this is, this looks like Texas somewhere,’” lead singer Doug Robb told CNN before the band headlined the Fourth of July celebrations for service members and their families.
“It’s like we’re in a different part of the world, and then, all of a sudden, we’re back in the States,” Robb said of the sprawling US base, home to 41,000 people, south of the capital Seoul.
Humphreys’ main street on the Fourth wouldn’t seem out of place in hundreds of small American cities. Kids splashed in a sidewalk fountain. Mobile food trucks served up barbecue, American and Korean. Schools and scouts held fundraisers. Military spouses sold sweets from their home-based businesses.
The difference here is that these scenes played out under the protection of Patriot missile defense launchers, just 60 miles from North Korea, and just a few minutes’ flight time for the arsenal of rocket launchers and artillery guns that point south and are commanded by Kim Jong Un, one of the world’s most isolated autocrats.
Chinese Migrants Flock to Mexico in Search of Jobs, a Future and, for Some, a Taste of Freedom
Despite her well-paying tech job, Li Daijing didn’t hesitate when her cousin asked for help running a restaurant in Mexico City. She packed up and left China for the Mexican capital last year, with dreams of a new adventure.
The 30-year-old woman from Chengdu, the Sichuan provincial capital, hopes one day to start an online business importing furniture from her home country.
“I want more,” Li said. “I want to be a strong woman. I want independence.”
Li is among a new wave of Chinese migrants who are leaving their country in search of opportunities, more freedom or better financial prospects at a time when China’s economy has slowed, youth unemployment rates remain high and its relations with the U.S. and its allies have soured.
While the U.S. border patrol arrested tens of thousands of Chinese at the U.S-Mexico border over the past year, thousands are making the Latin American country their final destination. Many have hopes to start businesses of their own, taking advantage of Mexico’s proximity to the U.S.
They’re Breaking Every Retirement Rule to Be Off Now, Not Later
Some workers want to spread retirement throughout their careers, even if it means a smaller 401(k).
When Dana Saperstein quit her marketing job to spend six months hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the then-31-year-old thought of it as a microretirement.
“If I keep working myself to the bone until 60 years old, I might physically never be able” to hike the 2,650-mile Mexico-to-Canada trail, she said.
Saperstein is among a small number of workers in their 20s and 30s borrowing years of freedom from their future selves to enjoy some of their retirement while they are still young.
Unlike followers of the FIRE movement, short for “financial independence, retire early,” those seeking microretirements say they aren’t looking for a shortcut to retirement by saving aggressively and living frugally. Their early retirement comes in the form of shorter breaks for travel or other pursuits."
Thank you so much for this wide range of interesting topics and for all your hard work and curating and providing this service.
Happy Friday everyone! Feels like it took way more than 7 days to get here again. Maybe I'm just looking at it like a child though. :)
Regarding the cost of EVs, I am in the camp of those who will never own one. We have way too many enemies around the world who are tech savvy and looking for the next way to take us down, so three letters remain in the back of my mind whenever someone mentions electric vehicles: E.M.P.
When our president mentioned going electric on our war vehicles by 2030 I thought I heard wrong. There is zero good that can come from having our tanks and all terrain vehicles run on electricity at war. Also, Ford has lost $7.4 billion (with a "B") on the Rivian and stopped making it. Tesla seems to be everywhere but what happens when the car goes on fire (Thermal Runaway)? The Fire Dept. has to watch it burn until it's out then move it via flatbed to a facility that has a pool it can be submerged in for up to 8 hours to ensure it doesn't reignite. There's a company that actually invented the EV pool submersion kit that can be kept on a fire truck, erected around the car and flooded with water until the fire is out. On the side of the road that's a nightmare because it can take up to 5 hours.
The batteries are heavy, so having a designated area in old parking garages could lead to disaster. While newer garages can handle the weight, I don't see any placards on the entrance stating when the garage was built. Finally, electric cars are NOT zero emissions. they create more emissions than internal combustion engine vehicles when they are produced, and they also cause emissions when they are charged, usually by burning fossil fuels. I'd rather take that $100K and go on a spectacular vacation or put a down payment on a vacation home.