Today’s Big Story

We Fear Boredom

But feeling bored has an important purpose

“Only boring people get bored.” Did anyone else hear this as a kid? Or was it just me after inevitably whining, “I’m boooooreeed.” But no one likes feeling bored, right? We hate it so much that we spend hours mindlessly scrolling through our phones. Pulling down Instagram to refresh … only to find there’s nothing really new.

We fear boredom so much that many of us would rather experience physical discomfort than sit quietly with our own thoughts, as a recent University of Virginia study found. Nearly half of participants sitting alone in a room for 15 minutes, with no stimulation other than a button that would administer a mild electric shock, pressed the button.

On the other hand, we also romanticize boredom. Philosopher Walter Benjamin once wrote in his book Illuminations: “Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.” That is: boredom is a rich, loamy soil of creativity, and stepping back from the constant stimulus of everyday life allows the mind to expand. So which is it: a fertile, imaginative state or mind-numbing agony? The answer, according to experts who spoke to The Guardian, is both. Like life’s proverbial lemons, boredom is what you make of it.

Dr. Erin Westgate, an associate professor of social psychology at the University of Florida, compares boredom to pain—like the twinge of a twisted ankle. “It doesn’t feel good,” she says. “It hurts. But it’s critical because it lets us know when something is broken and needs to be fixed.” And even with technology bringing the world to our fingertips, society is experiencing higher levels of boredom, particularly in teenage girls, than it did even one or two decades ago, CNN reports.

Some say boredom is something of a dying concept. Our phones, filled with games and videos and social feeds, allow us to fill every moment with something, whether we’re on a long flight or in line for 30 seconds waiting for coffee. But the silly and playful While Waiting is a good reminder that boredom can be a good thing—an opportunity for our minds to wander in unexpected directions. The Verge describes it as “what would happen if WarioWare also tried to tell the story of a human life.” Which means that it’s a collection of extremely short, often weird minigames that all fit together to follow the story of a singular character through moments of waiting.

The DOGE Debacle Continues

The savings data doesn’t add up, but Trump is considering sending “dividends” to Americans

The Elon Musk-led DOGE's latest update on an accounting of its cost-cutting measures to date raises more questions than answers. And it didn't take long before at least one major error was identified in its receipts. The agency’s website said it canceled a contract for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency—for “program and technical support for the office of diversity and civil rights”— that was purportedly worth $8 billion. (That is a big contract that alone would all but use up ICE’s $9 billion annual budget.) It turns out, the contract was actually worth $8 million, as the New York Times and other publications have pointed out.

DOGE claims that its “total estimated savings” to date is roughly $55 billion. But many experts are questioning whether that sum is inflated. Bloomberg says the website lists $16.6 billion in savings. Now, there’s no doubt that wasteful spending is one of Washington’s most persistent and challenging problems. The Wall Street Journal says the federal government misspends at least $100 billion each year out of its multitrillion-dollar budget. Identifying the wasteful outlays isn’t the hardest part though; it is actually doing something about it.

And if DOGE can be as successful as they hope to be in reigning in unnecessary spending, President Trump said Wednesday that he likes the idea of giving some of the savings back to U.S. citizens as a kind of dividend. He said at an investment conference in Miami that the administration is considering a concept in which 20% of the savings produced by DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts goes to American citizens and another 20% goes to paying down the national debt. Trump also said the potential for dividend payments would incentivize people to report wasteful spending.

A National Parks Crisis?

Parks were already facing a staffing problem, then came the government purge

America’s beloved national parks face a problem that could, in a matter of weeks, grow into a full-blown crisis. The number of people visiting areas managed by the National Park Service—which includes national parks, monuments, and other sites—is way up. In 2023, the most recent year for national data, parks had more than 325 million visits. That’s about a 16% bump relative to 2010. At least in some parks, visitation rates have continued to rise. Meanwhile, staffing at the National Park Service is down, having dropped about 13% over that same period.

And this was before the recent layoffs. Late last week, the Trump administration laid off roughly 1,000 workers in the National Park Service, or about 5% of its workforce. Those staffers do everything from collect entry fees—a significant portion of park income—to guide tours and pump toilets. Outside asked experts whether park visitors will be able to see a difference when they hike on trails, arrive at visitor centers, or use the restroom. The answer? You bet.

“It’s chaos everywhere,” said Kristin Jenn, a former seasonal park ranger at Alaska’s Denali National Park and Preserve told the Washington Post. “I don’t know what the next couple of months are going to bring.” This summer could prove to be a test of sorts. A new reservation system to limit crowd congestion at Yosemite National Park in California is indefinitely on hold amid the broader Trump administration freeze on new policies, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. And visitors should expect fewer services, less help, and fewer projects like trails or construction getting fixed, at least for the time being.

Apple’s Surprise iPhone

The company unveils a souped-up and more expensive version of its lowest priced phone

Apple skipped the big keynote event for the launch of its newest iPhone, the iPhone 16E, revealing it Wednesday via a press release instead. The smartphone takes the place of the 2022-released iPhone SE (3rd-gen)—which, as of yesterday, Apple has officially discontinued—as the brand’s most affordable iPhone. It starts at $599, making it $200 cheaper than the base model iPhone 16.

CNET points out that “at a time when phone-makers have bet their success on implementing custom artificial intelligence features into their devices faster than their rivals, Apple makes it clear that its AI isn't limited to its expensive flagship devices.” Powering the iPhone 16E is Apple's A18 chip (the same one found in the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus), so it can run Apple Intelligence. This makes the new Apple phone a rarity: a sub-$600 device that can run the same AI features as its more expensive siblings.

The Verge likes that Apple brought the Action Button to its new affordable iPhone 16E. “It’s one of the better hardware features Apple introduced in recent years.” But they don’t appreciate that MagSafe is missing. And Gizmodo took offense to the lack of an ultra-wide camera lens and were surprised to miss the Dynamic Island, which they found surprisingly helpful when playing music or navigating with Google Maps.

The Long Read

James Murdoch on mind games, sibling rivalry, and the war for the family media empire

Guard your mental health.