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No wait, we can do better than that. It's Free for All Friday!
It’s Free for ALL Friday! Each week on Friday, I share off-the-path links and work extra-hard to make sure you never hit a paywall.
We’ll be running Big Optimism on Labor Day, and then we should emerge from the fabled “Low Power Mode. Thanks for bearing with me!
‘Barely Surviving’: Some Flight Attendants are Facing Homelessness and Hunger
Working “on reserve” with hours of unpaid labor makes it difficult for new flight attendants to turn the job into a career.
Kay had already worked a full day when Frontier Airlines called her to pick up a shift. The recently hired flight attendant had been awake since 4 a.m. driving Lyft, one of the few side gigs she could manage with her unpredictable schedule.
Her new career was off to a rough start. There were three-and-a-half weeks of unpaid training. Her first few paychecks were lower than she’d anticipated. She gave up her apartment in Atlanta, where median rent is about $1,500, and had been renting a room from a friend.
The only way to make ends meet, she said, was to juggle all the gig work she could find. So after working for Frontier from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m., Kay turned back to Lyft. By the time she reached a $500 bonus for driving 120 passengers in four days, she’d gone nearly 24 hours without sleep.
New flight attendants like Kay learn that although their work has been deemed “essential” to the transportation infrastructure, it’s hard to stay afloat. A complicated pay structure that prioritizes hours in the air and entry-level wages that are on par with service industry jobs makes it difficult for many to turn the job into a career.
“I have to supplement my income. But then I’m also not sleeping,” said Kay. “We’re expected to save people on the plane … and we’re not getting paid a living wage.”
Free Link: The Washington Post (let me know if anyone has issues with this link; the WashPost links have been finicky lately, but the Post itself assures me they should work)
AI Doomers Had Their Big Moment
Did they waste it?
Helen Toner remembers when every person who worked in AI safety could fit onto a school bus. The year was 2016. Toner hadn’t yet joined OpenAI’s board and hadn’t yet played a crucial role in the (short-lived) firing of its CEO, Sam Altman. She was working at Open Philanthropy, a nonprofit associated with the effective-altruism movement, when she first connected with the small community of intellectuals who care about AI risk. “It was, like, 50 people,” she told me recently by phone. They were more of a sci-fi-adjacent subculture than a proper discipline.
After ChatGPT’s release in November 2022, that whole spectrum of AI-risk experts—from measured philosopher types to those convinced of imminent Armageddon—achieved a new cultural prominence. People were unnerved to find themselves talking fluidly with a bot. Many were curious about the new technology’s promise, but some were also frightened by its implications. Researchers who worried about AI risk had been treated as pariahs in elite circles. Suddenly, they were able to get their case across to the masses, Toner said. They were invited onto serious news shows and popular podcasts. The apocalyptic pronouncements that they made in these venues were given due consideration.
But only for a time. After a year or so, ChatGPT ceased to be a sparkly new wonder. Like many marvels of the internet age, it quickly became part of our everyday digital furniture. Public interest faded. In Congress, bipartisan momentum for AI regulation stalled. Some risk experts—Toner in particular—had achieved real power inside tech companies, but when they clashed with their overlords, they lost influence. Now that the AI-safety community’s moment in the sun has come to a close, I wanted to check in on them—especially the true believers. Are they licking their wounds? Do they wish they’d done things differently?
Nvidia Rally Mints Millionaires Too Busy to Bask in New Wealth
Many of the chipmaker’s employees have grown rich but still face a stress-filled work life.
It’s a summer day in Santa Clara, California, and an assortment of luxury cars — Porsches, Corvettes, Lamborghinis — take up parking spots previously occupied by humbler models. Some have new paint jobs in the lime green from Nvidia Corp.’s logo. And they are stuck where their owners want to be: at the office.
Nvidia stock has gained 3,776% since the start of 2019 as the company benefits from selling the main chip necessary for artificial intelligence work, minting many new multimillionaires in the process. But the work hours are just as grueling and high-stress, current and former employees said, leaving little time for the jet-setting, homebuying and leisure many can now afford. A culture problem is brewing, said the 10 people, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution.
The 31-year-old chipmaker has piled on market cap faster than any other company in history. Founder and Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang has established expectations of scrappiness and overworking, with a chaotic structure where one manager can have dozens of direct reports, the current and former employees said. Rather than firing employees like his competitors, Huang has said he prefers to “torture them into greatness.”
If You Weren’t Under an Extreme-Weather Alert, You’re Alone
A whopping 99% of the country has been subject to at least one from the National Weather Service since May. Just assume you’re at climate risk.
Nearly the entire US population — 99% of the country — has been subject to at least one National Weather Service extreme-weather alert since May, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy group. And it’s only August! We’re still just halfway through the “danger season” of May to October, as scientists described it to the Los Angeles Times.
Many of these people have suffered through multiple disasters at once, an unwelcome phenomenon known as “compound events.” People in Houston, for example, last month had to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, including widespread power failures, in the middle of a crushing heat wave.
Models and the cool maps they produce may offer the appearance of granular precision, but any modeler will tell you their results can’t promise that level of foresight. There are margins of error. Don’t let your house fall into them.
Teen Girls Are Spending Big. She Tells Them What to Buy.
Demetra Dias is your typical American 17-year-old. Brands are betting their futures on her.
In many ways, Demetra is your typical American teenager: She takes science exams, does gymnastics and spends weekends with her boyfriend. Petite with long, brown hair and sun-kissed skin, she’s the kind of girl many tweens and teens want to be—a few million of them, in fact.
“Girl everything you wear is perfect ❤️❤️❤️,” one fan wrote recently on a video Demetra posted about pajamas. “Ur literally look like the sweetest person ever ily 😭💞,” commented another.
Demetra has been on TikTok for years, but last August, she started posting fashion videos on a second TikTok account that her friends couldn’t see, in the hopes that she could build a following. When a back-to-school shopping haul from the store Brandy Melville went viral, a switch flipped.
She started reaching out to companies to see if they had products she could promote. Edikted, a fast-fashion brand popular on TikTok, was the first to send her free clothes. Then, in September, she got her first paid deal through a direct message on Instagram: The app BeReal offered her $190 for a single mention.
Now, every week, roughly half a dozen boxes arrive at Demetra’s doorstep in northern New Jersey, filled with pajamas, hair sprays, perfumes, sneakers, tank tops and hoodies, in the hopes that she will post about the products. She has done sponsored TikToks for Steve Madden, White Fox, Princess Polly, PacSun and Hollister. Her going rate is around $20,000 a post. Demetra declined to share her annual income.
They Spent $27 Million Building Their Dream House. Now It’s Hitting the Auction Block.
The roughly 40,000-square-foot New Jersey property has a reserve price of just $10 million
Pharmacological entrepreneurs Calvin and Orsula Knowlton spent roughly $27 million building one of the largest and most ostentatious homes in their native state of New Jersey.
Now, they are auctioning it off with a reserve price of just $10 million.
The move to put the Moorestown, N.J., property on the auction block caps a seven-year-long journey, during which the couple discarded their original plans for the site, faced permitting and construction delays and vastly expanded their ambitions for the more than 40,000-square-foot mansion, which has a chapel, an English-style pub, a gym, a home theater, a wine grotto and a golf simulator.
While they are proud of the project, the couple admitted it has been a financial boondoggle.
“It’s sunk cost,” said Calvin, noting that, as a businessman, he is used to dealing with good and bad outcomes. “Sometimes you do really well…and other times you don’t. It’s just part of the ups and downs and proclivities of life.”
30 Questions to Engage Someone Beyond ‘How Are You?’
Put the small talk on pause.
Our default question when we bump into someone—whether new acquaintance, old friend, or steadfast partner—is to say, “How are you?” It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to ask and considered polite protocol, but it’s not exactly the best way to engage someone on a deeper level. Not just because it’s a boring, expected question, but because it comes with a boring, expected answer: “I’m good.”
“We [often] resort to small talk because it's socially safe, helps maintain norms, and avoids the vulnerability or discomfort that deeper conversations may bring,” says Charles Sweet, PsyD, a psychiatrist and advisor at Linear Health.
So how do we break out of this cycle? And why is doing so important, anyway? We’ve got answers ahead, along with a list of questions you can whip out the next time you’re down to connect in a meaningful way.
A few examples:
Someone you just met: “How’d you find yourself here today?”
Someone you've met before: “Whatever happened with [XYZ thing they brought up last time]?”
Someone you've known a long time: “Is there anything you'd like to share you're proud of that I can celebrate with you?”
Teen Girls Are Spending Big. She Tells Them What to Buy.
So, if I want to be able to buy tops that actually meet the top of my pants, and pants that don't go all the way up to my armpits, I have to start a TikTok channel, ask retailers to send me free clothes and post videos of myself promoting them? Is there anyone else out there who can advocate for the non "hootchie mamas" who just want to look nice, carry a good style and not look like we're trying to stay in our twenties? Asking for a friend...
The flight attendant story, unpaid training, many unpaid hours, and having to resort to side gigs to earn a living, has me wondering if Canadian flight attendants are facing similar working conditions. If so, why on God's green earth would anyone subject themselves to this?