In 2024, the regrettable Morgan & Morgan spent a horrifying $350 million dollars on marketing, and a decent chunk of that was used on roadside advertising. Why exactly do personal injury lawyers buy so many billboards?

“Because PI [personal injury] is direct-to-consumer, it can affect anybody. It’s not like estate planning, where you’re targeting a very potentially small set of folks: people that have high net worth or a lot of assets. [PI ads] can really be relevant to anyone and everyone.”

And if you want to target “everyone,” there’s no substitute for hanging a huge rectangular advertisement on the side of a busy roadway.

It also seems likely that attorneys are buying billboards because their competitors are buying billboards, in an awful arms race. Personally, I’d be very much in favor of a billboard non-proliferation treaty.

Off the coast of British Columbia, a pod of Pacific white-sided dolphins has been spotted teaming up with killer whales to hunt salmon together.

In 1996, following the horrific Port Arthur massacre, Australia swiftly enacted strict gun laws. For more than two decades after that, the nation had no mass shootings.

Following last Sunday’s tragedy at Bondi Beach, Australia is poised to once again strengthen their gun laws. As an American, seeing a government getting things done and making things better strikes me as quite a concept.

Nearly all Americans drive, but it’s by necessity, not necessarily by choice.

Today, cars are an inescapable fact of life in most of the country. Almost 70% of U.S. workers drove alone to work in 2022, compared to 2.9% who biked or walked and 3.1% who took public transportation.

This reality doesn’t necessarily reflect Americans’ preferences, however. Many people in the U.S. want to live in walkable areas, but only a small fraction of the nation’s developed land fits this description. Around 90% of all housing in the nation’s largest metro areas is located in car-centric suburbs. The low supply of real estate in walkable neighborhoods drives prices upward, making it unaffordable for most people.

Culdesac Tempe is a 17-acre car-free residential development that could be a model for walkable neighborhoods in America.

When I was in high school, the elderly father of my good friend Josh H. passed away. The body was cremated, and eventually, Josh and his mother traveled to a scenic spot to spread some of the ashes. Josh later described the experience to me as one of beauty and wonder, musing thoughtfully as he looked back.

“It was really awe-inspiring,” Josh said. “We were both just blown away.”

I nodded, attempting to express sympathy and understanding, when Josh continued after a beat.

“Not as blown away as my dad, of course.”

If you think that’s awful, you’re right. But if you think we didn’t both burst out laughing, you’re wrong. The Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh once wrote “Life is both dreadful and wonderful”, and I think about that often. I think about Josh’s joke often too, and it always makes me smile. It is both dreadful and wonderful.

In a recent podcast appearance, Conan O’Brien and Will Arnett discussed the deaths of Conan’s parents in a similar vein. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a very long time, and I encourage you to check it out. The whole video is entertaining, but the two minutes from 2:33 on are what I’ve re-watched a half-dozen times since yesterday.

Footnotes:

1. The full video is archived here. ↩︎

Last month, Paige Batten was quite surprised to learn that her driveway had been removed. Having not requested that this be done, the initial question was “Who steals a driveway?”.

Not long after, some answers came in. The driveway was taken out by a legitimate contractor who had been tricked into performing a job the homeowner had not ordered. It seems Batten’s vacant home was just a useful location for a scam, one that involved a whole lot of unnecessary labor. Here’s Donnie McSears, owner of McSears Concrete Finishing:

“…he reached out to me and wanted the driveway removed and said figure me a price. He said I’m gonna send you 50% before you get started, so I’m still waiting on my first check I haven’t gotten anything. He also wanted me to pay a $2000 furniture bill for him,” said McSears.

I guess the question now is “Who scammed a concrete contractor?”. Also, “What exactly was the scam here?”. It’s not spelled out very well, but I believe this was a form of overpayment scam, where the criminal overpays for a job with a bad check and then quickly gets money back from the recipient (or I guess has them pay off a “furniture bill”, which strikes me as both extra suspicious and likely to have more of a paper trail). Only later does the victim learn that the original payment was fraudulent, and they’re out whatever cash they sent away.

There’s gotta be an easier scam out there though, one that doesn’t involve making multiple laborers do back-breaking work to steal a random person’s driveway. And then, because the victim is a decent person, do back-breaking work to return a random person’s driveway as well. I don’t know if McSears actually sent any money to the scammer, but his company is certainly out the time spent removing and then restoring a driveway at no charge.

In 2011, back when Twitter was fun, a tweet aimed at Detroit’s mayor went viral. That tweet is now gone, but Wikipedia describes the exchange:

In early 2011, Detroit mayor Dave Bing and his communications team solicited suggestions on Twitter for improvements to the city. On February 7, 2011, user @MT responded “Philadelphia has a statue of Rocky & RoboCop would kick Rocky’s butt. He’s a GREAT ambassador for Detroit.” Bing replied to the tweet, writing “There are not any plans to erect a statue to RoboCop. Thank you for the suggestion.”

Plans change. Nearly 15 years later, RoboCop now stands tall in the Motor City. Why not?