Chosen family

January 29, 2025

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Chosen family: This number surprised me: About 27% of folks are estranged from their families. So sad. Enter the 11,000-member Facebook group Surrogate Grandparents USA. Donna Skora, a retired paralegal in Florida, started it in 2015. Folks can post ads or respond to others’ requests for surrogate grandparents. It’s helped people like Karen Tautges Malinak, a goat farmer in Minnesota who’s lost touch with her daughters.

Tags: Facebook, family

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What you need to know about DeepSeek

I’ve been saying it for years: The country that masters AI will dominate the world economically, politically and militarily. Since ChatGPT dropped, the U.S. seemed untouchable. Most of us Americans assumed we were a couple of years ahead of China in terms of AI, but the game has changed — and fast.

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Why Trump and tech CEOs are together

This past week, someone called me a “f***ing MAGA c***” in the comments for my newsletter, The Current. That reader didn’t leave a name (surprise) and clearly didn’t appreciate what I said about Stargate: “[The] announcement by President Trump, along with the biggest tech CEOs, is the most consequential technical project of the century.”

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11% higher

Salary for pretty people. Researchers followed 43,000 MBA grads, and the ones seen as conventionally attractive make more than their homely peers. The disparity was largest in management and consulting and smallest in technical fields, like IT and engineering. I’m still deciding if I should be offended …

$300,000

Paid over six months to TikTokkers willing to jump ship and go Instagram-exclusive. Meta’s contracts, which were sent to certain influencers with 1 million followers or more, are broken down into tiers (paywall link). The top one pays $50,000 a month to post 10 Reels between 15 seconds and 3 minutes in length. I’d take that hourly rate.

$3.69

The cost to produce and distribute a single penny. According to the U.S. Mint, the price jumped 20% during the 2024 fiscal year. Isn’t that crazy? Speaking of … How does a penny look under a microscope? Magnificent. (I heard you groan!)

1,000 feet

How far one skier fell down a slope. The unnamed skier was saved by their Apple Watch’s Emergency SOS feature near Stevens Pass in Washington. Rescuers tracked the signal and found the skier with two others. Check out their epic airlift to safety. One of the skiers was uninjured; the other two had broken bones. Smart tech saves lives.

40%

Percentage of employers that would rather hire AI than a Gen Z graduate. Small-business owners say Gen Zers are often the least reliable and more likely to suffer a mental health episode compared to their other employees. I’m going to tell my Gen Z son a joke about Social Security. I bet he doesn’t get it.

$2

That’s all an Indiana pizza delivery driver got after delivering a $40 order during a massive snowstorm. A police officer saw him, shared his story on TikTok and started a GoFundMe campaign. The goal was $500, but over $30,000 poured in. Thank goodness, he kneaded the dough. (Oh, that was so bad, it was good!)

$150 million

Asking price for Tom Brady’s mansion, complete with a basement bunker. The former NFL superstar bought a lot on Florida’s Indian Creek Island for $17 million in 2020. Property costs there skyrocketed thanks to Jeff Bezos, who bought three properties (paywall link) on the manmade barrier island.

410 megapixels

What Canon managed to cram into a 35mm full-frame sensor. For perspective, it has a 24K resolution, 198 times sharper than HD. And no, it’s not coming to the consumer market anytime soon. It’s going to be used for surveillance so photos can be enlarged without losing their detail.