Welcome to the weekend.
Prime Numbers
17,500,000 — CD sales jumped 45.7% in the first half of 2026 versus the same period last year, with 17.5 million units sold as physical media keeps defying streaming’s dominance.
236 — 236 colleges are now offering direct admissions through the Common App this cycle, nearly double the 119 schools that participated just two years ago, as pressured private colleges compete for shrinking applicant pools.
90 — Used EVs retain about 90% of their original battery capacity even after 150,000 km, according to a study of over 500,000 tests across 20 popular models.
The Case for Surveillance
Before license plate cameras, catching a stolen silver Volkswagen meant pulling over every silver Volkswagen in town for the rest of the night, a dragnet with no accountability and no paper trail. Flock’s roadside cameras, which photograph passing plates and flag stolen cars for $3,000 a year, actually shrink police intrusion rather than expand it, letting officers target the one car that matters instead of stopping everyone who looks vaguely similar. The numbers back him up, Atlantic City saw shootings drop nearly 40% after expanding its camera network, and courts have consistently ruled that a license plate on a public road carries no expectation of privacy. More than 150 towns have ripped the cameras down anyway, which means the residents most likely to suffer are the ones in small departments who can’t afford helicopters or enough officers to watch the roads the old-fashioned way. Works in Progress (11 minutes)
Einstein on Happiness
What if the people and things you love the most are actually the least reliable source of happiness? Einstein’s argument is that a happy life should be tied to a goal, not to people or things, because people change or leave and things break or lose their appeal. When your happiness depends on either, it sits outside your control, since your mind eventually normalizes and stops being satisfied by whatever you have. A goal, by contrast, gives you a direction that pulls you forward from within, one that can evolve but doesn’t collapse when circumstances shift, leaving you with a reason of your own to wake up each day. Postanly Weekly (5 minutes)
Roach Medics
Somewhere in a collapsed building, the thing that saves your life might be a giant cockroach with a needle strapped to its back. Researchers in Australia have wired up burrowing cockroaches with cameras and tiny remote-controlled injectors, turning them from mere scouts into actual first responders that can deliver medical aid to people trapped too deep in rubble for humans to reach. In testing, these “paraborgs” hit their target from close range 95% of the time and completed the full find-and-inject mission 72% of the time, all while the insects go on to live a normal cockroach lifespan afterward. It’s an unsettling image, a swarm of bugs crawling toward you in the dark, but within a decade it could be the difference between rescue crews reaching you in time or not. The Guardian (3 minutes)
Half-Built Pyramids
Believing you have five years left to live turns out to be strangely calming for a lot of people, at least once they get used to the idea. Researchers and workers at AI safety labs who expect AGI within the decade describe treating extinction risk the way anyone should treat mortality: put a number on it, stop pretending you were ever guaranteed a long life, and use that clarity to actually live, quitting hated jobs, drinking the good wine, finishing half-built passion projects instead of folding endless laundry. Money gets spent down rather than saved, long-postponed trips finally get taken, and kids get had even by people who doubt they’ll live to see them grow up. The takeaway isn’t really about artificial intelligence, it’s that most of us are already avoiding the same reckoning with mortality these people have simply been forced into early. Asterisk (13 minutes)
Chasing the Turn
A leaf-peeping trip is really a timing problem, and missing by a week means either a wall of green or a forest of brown. SmokyMountains.com’s 2026 foliage tracker, built on NOAA data, shows peak colors hitting the northern Rockies and upper Midwest by late September, with New England, upstate New York, and Michigan following by October 6, while a wet spring and drier fall should make this an especially vivid season up north. Farther south, the Blue Ridge Parkway peaks around October 13-20, and Sonoma’s wine country doesn’t turn until the week of October 27, right as harvest season kicks in. Timing a leaf-peeping trip has always been part science, part gamble, but this year the guesswork is mostly optional. Afar (4 minutes)
Accidentally Quitting Drinking
For thirty years, one instinct kept a daily drinker from ever admitting she had a problem, everyone she’d met with real alcoholism seemed to burn brighter and crash harder than she did. She drank most nights, measured her limit at half a bottle of wine, and treated every headline about the dangers of drinking as proof that sobriety culture was just puritanism in disguise. Then a breakup, a psychedelic therapy session, and a friend’s offhand suggestion to take a short break did what decades of self-monitoring couldn’t, within a week she felt a lifelong current of inherited anger simply go quiet. The lesson isn’t that everyone should quit drinking, it’s that the moment someone finally stops isn’t usually a dramatic rock bottom, it’s a small, almost boring decision that turns out to change everything. The New Yorker (18 minutes)
Sweat Instead of Sleep
Twenty minutes on a bike can apparently do what a nap does for your brain, just through a completely different door. Researchers at McGill kept 54 people awake for 30 straight hours, then split them into a napping group, an exercise group, and a control group, and found that a 20-minute vigorous cycling session protected memory just as well as a 90-minute nap. Naps work by lowering “sleep pressure,” the biological urge to crash, while exercise leaves that pressure untouched but somehow helps the brain use its resources more efficiently anyway, two totally different mechanisms arriving at the same result. It’s not a replacement for actual sleep, but if you’re stuck under fluorescent lights at 2pm with no place to nap, a brisk walk or a quick workout might be your best move. GQ (3 minutes)
Should We Work Together?
Hi! I’m Kyle. This newsletter is my passion project. When I’m not writing, I run a law firm that helps startups move fast without breaking things. Most founders want a trusted legal partner, but they hate surprise legal bills. At Westaway, we take care of your startup’s legal needs for a flat, monthly fee so you can control your costs and focus on scaling your business. If you’re interested, let’s jump on a call to see if you’re a good fit for the firm. Click here to schedule a one-on-one call with me.
Weekend Wisdom
The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. - Pablo Picasso
Great list today!