Ali Akbar has been selling newspapers on the streets of Paris for 50 years. Seven days a week. Ten hours a day. Rain or shine. On a secondhand bicycle, weaving between cafés in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, shouting “Ça y est!” — his signature catchphrase meaning “That’s it!” Last month, French President Emmanuel…
Business
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Before Chatbots, Customer Service Followed These Eleven Unwritten Rules
Before apps, chatbots, and self-checkout lanes, American customer service followed a quiet code. These unwritten rules shaped how stores, diners, hotels, and service counters operated for decades — and most of them weren’t posted on walls or included in training manuals. Customers expected them anyway. The principles that made old-school…
Health
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Nine Blood Molecules Predict Survival Better Than Your Birthday
The piRNA longevity test results came out of Duke University this week, and they’re the kind of findings that make you wonder what else we’ve been measuring wrong. Researchers analyzed blood samples from 1,271 adults aged 71 and older — samples drawn in the early 1990s from five North Carolina…
Culture
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The PSL Scale Turned Teenage Insecurity Into a Spreadsheet — And Nobody’s Winning
I would not like to be a kid right now. It was hard enough growing up and trying to make your way. Judging and being judged are part of it, but what I found out this week, aw man, I don’t know how these kids survive. I found out about…
AI
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ChatGPT Users Are Canceling Subscriptions After OpenAI Pentagon Deal — The Backlash Is Immediate
The OpenAI Pentagon deal landed this week like a brick through a plate-glass window. Anthropic — maker of Claude AI — told the U.S. Department of War it wouldn’t play ball unless two conditions were met: no autonomous weapons, no mass surveillance of American citizens. The Pentagon said no deal….
Consumer Protection
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Woman Fights $116 Ticket That Could’ve Cost Her $1,200 — Because She Actually Read the Law
A Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputy pulled over a Lake Worth Beach woman on February 11 and cited her for using a wireless device while driving. The infraction: holding a phone in her “right hand” while traveling northbound on North Dixie Highway. She doesn’t have a right hand. The woman…
Culture
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We Lost the Bars and Bowling Leagues — Then Blamed People for Being Lonely
The U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness a public health crisis — associated with depression, cardiovascular disease, even increased mortality risk — and the advice rolled out like clockwork: join a gym, download a friend app, try harder. As though the problem is you. As though fifty years of dismantled civic…
Business
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UK Chocolate Shoplifting Costs £408M — So Now You Need Permission to Buy a Creme Egg
British Supermarkets Lock Up Chocolate — Because Crime Gangs Love Ferrero Rocher The chocolate shoplifting situation in the UK has escalated to the point where Tesco and Sainsbury’s are installing anti-theft barriers on candy bars. Not razors. Not baby formula. Chocolate. Sainsbury’s confirmed it’s using security boxes on “regularly targeted”…
AI
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Anthropic the Only AI Company That Actually Stopped When It Said It Would
The Pentagon gave Anthropic until 5:01 p.m. ET Friday to soften its safety restrictions on Claude. Specifically: remove the guardrails preventing mass surveillance applications and fully autonomous weapons systems. The threat was explicit — comply or get labeled “a supply chain risk,” which would kill the company’s $200 million defense…
Culture
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A Budapest Restaurant Made Ancient Roman Pizza the Originally Way — Before Pizza Existed
A pizzeria in Budapest just did what most food historians only theorize about — they made pizza the way ancient Romans might have eaten it, which is to say, without anything we’d recognize as pizza. No tomatoes. No mozzarella. No running water to make the dough rise. Just fermented spinach…