Everyone’s a Zillow stalker now. Then I talk to Julie from California who wants to know if the $300 in her Cash App is real or a scam. Plus, what makes your house a burglar’s target and the missing Jeffery Epstein footage. Don’t miss it!
Confession time: I Zillow people — July 12th, Hour 2
🥶 Antarctica said, “Not today”: This kid has guts. A teenage solo pilot TikToker trying to fly to all seven continents landed in Antarctica without telling anyone. Authorities in Chile were like, “That’s illegal,” detained him for filing a fake flight plan and now, he’s ice-o-lated.
1
That’s how many people on Earth have the Gwada negative blood type. Talk about being your own emergency contact. The woman, a 68-year-old from Guadeloupe, is the sole human with a blood type so rare it wasn’t even recognized until now. She’s basically a medical unicorn, with receipts.
🎧 Control podcast speed: Here’s a trick to save time or catch every word. Tap the “1x” on your podcast’s now-playing screen to change the playback speed. Speed things up to 1.25x, 1.5x or 2x to move faster. Or slow it down to 0.75x when you want to listen more carefully. Works on most apps, like Spotify and Apple.
$28,900
The average used car price, up more than $8,000 since 2020. That’s not a typo. Blame supply chain chaos and automakers favoring pricey trims when chips were scarce. Now everyone’s diving into the used market, driving up prices, even for clunkers with mileage.
$4 trillion
Nvidia just became the first company in history to hit this market cap. That’s more than the GDP of Germany. Not bad for a company that used to be best known for making your graphics card run Call of Duty without melting. Now, it’s powering the AI boom and casually leapfrogging Microsoft and Apple.
Phones keep vanishing: TSA bins are the Bermuda Triangle for your electronics. A travel pro’s now-viral advice? Never put your phone straight into the tray. Thieves can (and do) swipe them while you’re still retying your shoes. Instead, zip your tech into a bag pocket unless an agent tells you otherwise.
Scam emails
Scam emails? So 2022. Phishers now are spinning up entire scam sites faster than you can microwave leftovers. Okta, a login security company, caught bad actors using v0 (a site-building AI tool by Vercel) to launch convincing login clones, including one of Okta’s own.
🛩️ Amelia Earhart mystery: Another team is trying to find out what ever happened to the famous pilot who disappeared 88 years ago. They’re heading to Nikumaroro, a remote island in the Pacific Ocean. Why now? A satellite image revealed something odd, called the “Taraia Object,” that could be part of her missing plane. Stay tuned.
$1.5 billion
That’s how much Figma could raise in its IPO, if Wall Street swipes right. That would match CoreWeave for biggest tech IPO of the year. Still a bit of a haircut, given that Adobe tried to buy it for $20 billion in 2022. Now it’s flaunting 91% margins like it’s back on the dating scene with a six-pack.
TSA gets it right: Gold Star families now have free PreCheck, plus a discount for military spouses, and TSA is adding expedited lanes in 10 cities. It’s part of their July 4th rollout that finally makes airport lines suck a little less to thank families for their service to our country.
🎧 Share podcasts from your iPad: Listening to something good and want to send it to a friend? While the episode’s playing, tap the three-dot menu and choose Share Episode. At the top, select From Start or the exact time you want, like From 12:31. Now tap Done, pick how you want to share it and send.
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Swipe in with three fingers on your iPad or iPhone from the side to copy/paste or undo/redo. It’s the gesture shortcut pros (and now you) use.
👨🏫 Artificial degree syndrome: Forget cramming Java syntax, universities are now teaching students how to think like machines (paywall link). AI is shaking computer science ed, and schools like Carnegie Mellon are pivoting hard. The new curriculum? Vibe coding.
It takes an AI village: X is getting more AI slop. It will now allow AI to write Community Notes, but only if humans give them a thumbs-up. You’ll see them labeled as AI-written. Bots are no longer just spreading misinformation, now they’re trying to clean it up, too.
Clean up your Chrome bookmarks: If your favorites bar is filling up, save space by removing the bookmark name. Right-click a bookmark, select Edit, delete the Name and hit Save. You’ll still see the icon. FYI: If you have multiple links to the same site, they’ll all look the same now. Just rename them.
AI-proof, for now: Turns out some white-collar gigs are harder to kill than expected. Looks like we’re gonna need tens of thousands more accountants, CEOs and financial advisers by 2030, even as AI keeps eating jobs like it’s at a buffet. AI also can’t replace CEOs because it hasn’t learned golf yet.
$500
That’s the fine for firing up your gas blower in D.C. That means if you leaf-blow your yard and your neighbor’s patience, you’re also blowing $500 per offense. Gas blowers roared onto the scene in the 1970s, and now they’re getting banned (like in California) for being noisy, dirty and possibly harmful. Need an upgrade? This electric blower ($49.49) has great reviews.
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📞 Press 1 to scream: This drives me nuts, and now we know it’s on purpose. The customer service endless holds. The loops. The “wrong department” reroutes. Turns out it’s not a glitch, it’s the point (paywall link). These systems are designed to wear you down until you give up and hang up. You’re not crazy. You’re just trapped in the admin-industrial complex.
Unlimited PTO is out
It sounded like a dream until the reality of business kicked in. Now, Big Tech is ditching the perks and rediscovering a brutal truth