President Carter Remembered; the Big Threat to Bitcoin; and How to Raise Successful Kids (+ 4 More)

It's Free for All ... um MONDAY!

It’s Free for ALL Friday Monday!

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.

I had intended to send a version of this last Friday. But, my friends: I got sick. The flu!

It was not fun. Thankfully, I got the flu shot last October, so I don’t think it was anywhere near as bad as it might have been. But still: doubleplusungood, zero stars, do not recommend!

So, here’s an updated version of the Free for ALL—along with an update. Bottom line, I have a lot of good changes for the newsletter coming shortly. However, between travel and ailments and all that, I’m behind schedule.

Rather than risk falling further behind, I’m going to cut myself a bit of a break, and take a bit of time off here and there over the first few weeks of January to get caught up and ready for a great new year.

I think this will mean a mix of low power mode, a few days off — but also, a few things that I really want to write and share with you just because that’s what I do.

As always, thanks for being here. Here’s to a better 2025 than we imagine!

(This is what comes up when you search Unsplash’s AI-powered engine for “Jimmy Carter.” I’d like to think he would be amused.)

Jimmy Carter, Peacemaking President Amid Crises, Is Dead at 100

President Carter died on Sunday at age 100. I'm including Carter's New York Times obituary; he has the distinction of outliving one of the men who wrote it, Roy Reed, who died in 2017.

With his peanut farmer’s blue jeans, his broad, toothy grin and his promise never to tell a lie, Mr. Carter was a self-professed outsider intent on reforming a broken Washington in an era of lost faith in government. He became one of his generation’s great peacemakers with his Camp David accords, bringing together Israel and Egypt, but he could not turn around a slumping economy or free American hostages seized by militants in Iran in time to win a second term.

While his presidency was remembered more for its failures than for its successes, his post-presidency was seen by many as a model for future chief executives. Rather than vanish from view or focus on moneymaking, he established the Carter Center to promote peace, fight disease and combat social inequality. He transformed himself into a freelance diplomat traveling the globe, sometimes irritating his successors but earning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. (The New York Times)

---

The Fight to Save Googie, the Style of Postwar Optimism

The car-centric architectural style, characterized by neon signs and dramatic rooflines, is now endangered. Its admirers mourn the loss of the ideals it represented.

In June, the Arby’s on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles shut down. The news, announced on the restaurant’s marquee — “FAREWELL HOLLYWOOD TY FOR 55 GREAT YEARS” — didn’t seem surprising, with rents and labor costs on the rise. What was out of the ordinary was the public’s response to it.

On social media, people posted poetic, yearning odes — but not to the curly fries. They were more concerned about what would happen to the restaurant’s giant neon cowboy hat sign, a relic of the 1960s. One fan dramatically eulogized the sign on X, calling it a “garish dreamcatcher” that represented “abundance and continuity amid a roaring void.”

That cowboy hat is an example of the architectural style known as Googie (pronounced ghoo-ghee, with two hard G’s), which was popular from the 1940s to the 1970s. A product of car culture, Googie had its origins in Southern California and was adopted widely by roadside businesses, including motels, doughnut shops and drive-ins. The style is defined by a futuristic, space-age look, with loud signs and dramatic rooflines to grab the attention of people driving by in cars.

Today, Googie buildings are an endangered species, facing redevelopment, demolition and restrictive design codes.

Earlier this fall, I spent a few days driving around Los Angeles and learning more about Googie from its most ardent fans, who’ve been fighting to protect the style for decades. (The New York Times)

---

A Looming Threat to Bitcoin: The Risk of a Quantum Hack

Researchers warn a quantum-computing attack on cryptocurrency would cause trillions in losses.

Bitcoin’s rally faces a risk that isn’t on the radar of most crypto investors: quantum computing.

The nascent technology, which drew attention this month after Google claimed a breakthrough with its new Willow quantum-computing chip, could one day enable hackers to break the encryption that keeps bitcoin secure. Such a hack could torpedo bitcoin’s price, by allowing thieves to swipe coins out of supposedly secure digital wallets.

Researchers say a quantum device powerful enough to crack bitcoin is likely a decade or more away. Still, advances in the technology pose a long-term risk, unless bitcoin’s fractious community of developers beef up its technology in a time-consuming upgrade.

“What you’ve got here is a time bomb waiting to explode, if and when someone gets that ability to develop quantum-computer hacking and decides to use that to target cryptocurrencies,” said Arthur Herman, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

A 2022 Hudson Institute study estimated that a quantum hack of bitcoin would cause more than $3 trillion in losses across crypto and other markets and trigger a deep recession. (The Wall Street Journal)

---

Pope Set to Give Catholic Church Its First Millennial and Digital Saint

Carlo Acutis died of leukemia in 2006 at age 15. He has been dubbed the “patron saint of the internet."

In just a few months, the world will have its first digital saint.

Pope Francis recently announced plans in April to canonize a teenage web designer who documented miracles online and used his tech skills to maintain websites for local Catholic organizations.

Carlo Acutis, who died of leukemia in Italy in 2006 at age 15, will be canonized during the Jubilee for Adolescents on April 25-27, according to Vatican News.

The church has attributed two miracles to Acutis, who was born to Italian parents in London and was informally known as “God’s influencer.”

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that only God performs miracles but that saints who are believed to be with God in heaven intercede on behalf of people who pray to them. A miracle is usually the medically inexplicable healing of a person.

The pope also said Wednesday he would canonize Pier Giorgio Frassati, a young Italian man who was known for helping those in need and died of polio in the 1920s, during the weekend of July 28 to Aug. 3. (NBC News)

---

Why Do We Still Have to Use Airplane Mode?

The EU lifted a ban on cell phones in 2022. Why hasn't the US?

Boarding a plane in the US means being greeted with the familiar instruction to turn portable electronic devices onto airplane mode or turn them off entirely.

The reason for this policy has long been that cell phones might interfere with aircraft systems. But the EU lifted its long-standing ban on cell phone usage in airplanes in 2022–so why are Americans still required to use airplane mode?

Richard Levy, an aviation consultant who worked for decades as a pilot for American Airlines and is now an instructor for Southwest Airlines, says that the FAA’s official line remains that cell phone signals could interfere with aircraft communications and navigation equipment. (The FAA, for its part, simply referred Popular Science to the regulations that require passengers to follow all crew members’ safety instructions, and did not comment further.)

The word “could” is obviously doing a lot of work in that sentence; what is the actual risk? Levy says that in modern aircraft, at least, the risk of interference with navigation equipment is minimal. “In the latest Boeings and Airbus planes,” he explains, “the navigation equipment [relies] on GPS, the same as in cars. And I’m not going to say the odds [of cell phones interfering with that system] are zero, but they’re next to zero.” (Popular Science)

---

A Slow Explosion: The Violent Birth of the Geminid Meteor Shower

The Geminids are one of the astronomical highlights of the year, creating a spectacular show of shooting stars every December. Scientists are now starting to understand where they came from.

It was a time of great upheaval. The Roman Empire was in chaos after the assassination of Emperor Severus Alexander, while China was in turmoil following a string of wars. Far above the heads of these human machinations around 1,800 years ago, however, another dramatic event was unfolding – the effects of which we can still see today.

Scientists think that around this time, something catastrophic happened to an asteroid called 3200 Phaethon, causing it to crumble and fling bits of debris into a long ring around the Sun. Every year, our own planet barrels through this cloud of debris, producing one of the most impressive meteor showers – the Geminids.

Look up on a clear winter night and you might catch a glimpse of them – streaks of light tracing across our sky. These are particles of this asteroid being vaporised in our atmosphere at speeds of up to 79,000 mph. (BBC)

---

I Interviewed 70 Parents Who Raised Highly Successful Adults: 4 Things They Wish They Had Known

Over 15 years, I interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs and their parents to learn how they were raised.

On the whole, these families are very happy with how their kids turned out. The parents say their grown children are not only accomplished and financially successful, but generous and kind. But looking back now, so many of the parents told me there were several things they wished they had known while their children were growing up.

These aren’t the same as their regrets. Still, the parents shared with me that, with this knowledge, they might have focused on different things or stressed less about what would become their children’s bright futures.

Here are the four things they would go back and tell themselves as young parents.

(CNBC)