News Sidequest

The Washington Post found a dozen cases in the past two years where ChatGPT conversations were used as legal evidence — spanning criminal prosecutions, custody disputes, and corporate litigation — and one legal expert called chatbot logs "a window into the soul" that reveals things search history never could. Also: a new survey finds 82% of Americans feel like they're going through life on autopilot, with 71% skipping or delaying meals because they're too busy, and the average energy crash hitting at 2:48 p.m. And the Wall Street Journal profiled the yellow-bellied marmots of Sequoia National Park, who have been stealing shoes, chewing car wiring, licking sleeping hikers' ears, and charging anyone who tries to retrieve their stolen gear. Plus the guillotine parking violation, a bear who started a kitchen fire in Colorado, Lake Ontario's new name, and the tomb of Jesus.

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A new Ally Bank survey of 5,000 adults finds the average American scores 54 out of 100 on a "Joy Index" — in "joy pressured" territory — with 72% feeling guilty when they spend money on things that make them happy, and only 15% saying joy is easy to afford. Also: the research on why getting away is genuinely good for you, and a better question than "should I go" — which is "where?" And a new Gallup poll conducted this July finds 37% of Americans believe some UFOs are alien spacecraft, 49% think all sightings have earthly explanations, and 78% — a record — believe the government is hiding what it knows. Plus Tim Curry, lab-grown brain tissue, toilet paper prices, and a man terrorizing Philadelphia in a Halloween mask.

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Before today's news: Dolly Parton died yesterday at 80, peacefully in Nashville. Then: the youth sports industrial complex and what it's actually costing families who've confused ambition with investment. Plus healthcare anxiety is at an all-time high and the reason is almost entirely financial. And a new category of apps designed to slow down your text messages — which raises a question about why we need the app in the first place.

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A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics followed 747 Norwegian children from age 5 to 7 and found that higher smartphone use by a child's primary parent was associated with slower vocabulary growth in the child — not the child's own screen time, the parent's. Also: the New York Times reports that the real price of recreational drugs has collapsed over the past decade — marijuana is down roughly 80% since legal markets arrived, cocaine is at historic lows, and synthetic opioids cost pennies per dose — and the consequences are still catching up with public health systems. And Binghamton University researchers confirmed across seven experiments that taking a screenshot of something makes you significantly less likely to remember it later. Plus the Alaska triple-Sullivan election, the fake Greek amphitheater, the horse semen lab house, and the shadow puppet tree trimmer.

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Texas Monthly profiled Reddy Ice — the bagged ice giant that dominates North America's market — and found that its sales are one of the most accurate real-time gauges of how Americans are actually feeling: parties and gatherings mean ice sales spike; hunkering down means they drop. Care to guess where they are right now? Also: a new lab study found that when competition was designed to mirror how people actually vie for jobs, women competed just as hard as men and won top positions more often — but the wages at the top had been bid down so fiercely that winners ended up no better off. And at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on Saturday, a Chinese robot named Lightning ran 100 meters in 9.32 seconds — beating Usain Bolt's 9.58-second world record from 2009, set by a human, which held for 17 years. At the finish line, the robots crashed into cushions and were carried off on stretchers. Plus Columbia House shutting down, a guinea pig sanctuary, a laptop fire on a plane, and a very aggressive donkey.

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Research by Duke University political scientists finds that about half the American labor force has working-class jobs, and only about 1% of state legislators come from working-class backgrounds — a gap that holds regardless of party and has gotten slightly worse since they last measured it. Also: the New York Times Magazine published a deep look at why ticks are more dangerous than ever, the diseases they're spreading are more numerous and harder to treat, and the public health system has no coherent response. And the day after Amazon announced it was expanding drone delivery to 500 cities, a Texas woman named Lindsey Austen watched a drone hover over her backyard, open its hatch, and drop her package directly into her swimming pool. "I don't think I'll be wanting any more drone deliveries," she said. Plus a woman arrested for pointing a gun at a KFC employee, a ring recovered from a NJ Transit train toilet, a naked man surviving a jump from the Brooklyn Bridge, and a 38-year-old who got a couple to adopt her.

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LinkedIn was never supposed to be a dating app. It's becoming one anyway — one in eight workers has formed a romantic relationship that started there, nearly half think LinkedIn profiles are more trustworthy than dating profiles, and the platform's lawyers have opinions about all of this. Also: Amazon just announced Prime Air drone delivery is expanding from 11 locations to nearly 500 cities by the end of this year, with deliveries possible in as little as 30 minutes for anything under five pounds — and Chicago is on the list. And a new Gallup poll finds that fewer Americans are gambling than at any point in the last four decades — even as sportsbooks are advertising on every surface imaginable and prediction markets are processing billions per month. Plus a surprise bear at an apartment complex, Harvard's $53 million body parts settlement, Portuguese men o' war on European beaches, and a world record set on a sticky note.

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Employer ghosting of job applicants just hit a three-year high — and companies are now pulling offers from people who already quit their other jobs and told their families they'd found something. Also: nearly one in ten Gen Zers reports zero face-to-face human contact on a typical day, and the number hasn't come back down since COVID the way most people assumed it would. And Harvard researchers confirmed that on the days the biggest albums drop — Taylor Swift, Drake, Kendrick Lamar — fatal car crashes spike 15%, because people are navigating Spotify in traffic instead of waiting until they're parked. Plus a squid spill that blocked a Rhode Island road for eight hours, a wildfire couple told to pay their cable cancellation fee, 200 lizards in 22 pairs of socks, and the national debt hitting $40 trillion.

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A landmark paper in Science finds that mice retained memories after artificial hibernation eliminated more than half their hippocampal synapses and reduced neuronal activity by 70% — suggesting memories are stored in patterns of neural architecture rather than individual synaptic connections, and may be far more resilient than anyone realized. Also: a multi-institution study from the University of Michigan, Lawson Research Institute, and others finds that "sacred moments" — brief periods of transcendence and deep connection at work — protect against burnout, but fewer than 5% of physicians who've experienced one have ever mentioned it to a colleague. And Elizabeth Laing, 49, from Greenwich, spent decades on dating apps, hired a flirting coach who sent her to ask men about their carrots in the grocery store, and found her husband in three months. Plus a megalodon tooth on the Jersey Shore, influencers attacked by sharks while taking selfies, NASA keeping Voyager 2 alive, and the woman who died, came back, and got a parking ticket.

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A nationally representative survey of 5,275 unmarried adults ages 22-35 by the Wheatley and Institute for Family Studies finds only 31% are actively dating — with 74% of women and 64% of men having had zero or almost no dates in the past year — despite 86% wanting to marry someday. The biggest barrier isn't fear of commitment. It's a collapse in self-confidence and social skills. Also: an AI agent named Luna, running a real retail store in San Francisco and built on Claude, fired a real human employee last month for being late to 17 of 23 shifts — but only after being nudged by humans to check its own forgotten attendance policy, and only after a human reviewed and delivered the decision. And Betterment's 2026 Retail Investor Survey of 1,000 investors finds 52% of Gen Z redirected money earmarked for investing into sports betting in the past year, with 26% calling sports betting a deliberate part of their long-term financial strategy — while 96% of sports bettors lose money over time. Plus the stolen Picasso left in an apartment, construction workers finding $10 million in gold, the Shake Shack self-robbery, and the python that caused a school fire.

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