Good morning! The phone line Social Security spent years apologizing for now picks up in about 36 seconds, and the TSA may finally let your laptop ride through security in the bag. Both are below.
Worth Knowing
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Social Security's 34-minute hold time is down to 36 secondsThe agency marked its 91st anniversary last week with a number worth a double take: the average wait on its national 800 line has fallen from 34 minutes in fiscal 2024 to about 36 seconds this July. The busy signal is gone too — a 0% busy rate over the past four months. If you've been putting off a call about benefits, a replacement card, or a claim because of the old hold-time horror stories, the math has changed. The agency also reports its backlog of initial disability claims is down more than 30%, from about 1.3 million to 884,000. |
| 2 |
A $25 tabletop fire pit is burning people — stop using it before checkingSouthern Telecom recalled about 48,700 Brookstone-branded tabletop fire pits on August 13 after two reports of flame jetting (a burst of flame beyond the burner) that caused second- and third-degree burns. The models are BSFIREPIT01, BSFIREPIT02, and BSFIREPIT03, sold at Macy's, Marshalls, and T.J. Maxx and online from February 2023 through December 2024 for $20 to $25. The remedy is a full refund. Stop using it first, then contact Southern Telecom. Don't light it one last time to finish the fuel. |
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⚠ Scam alert
The "Medicare agent" on the phone doesn't work for MedicareThe signal: a caller says they're with Medicare or your Medicare Advantage plan, offers to "compare your options," or warns your benefits will lapse unless you confirm your Medicare number, Social Security number, or bank details. Some follow up with official-looking mailers. Expect more of these as the October 15 enrollment window approaches. What to do: hang up. Medicare does not call you out of the blue, and legitimate enrollment help never charges a fee or needs your bank account. Give your Medicare number only to people you called yourself. Verify it: call 1-800-MEDICARE directly, compare plans only at medicare.gov, and report the call at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. |
| 4 |
That little fridge on Amazon has a fire problemCooluli recalled roughly 250,000 of its 10-liter and 15-liter mini-fridges on August 13 after 19 reports of units smoking, sparking, or catching fire, including one report of smoke inhalation and more than $80,000 in property damage. They were sold on Amazon and Cooluli's site from January 2019 through October 2024 for $80 to $120. It's the kind of fridge that ends up in a guest room, an office, or an RV and gets forgotten. Check the model and batch numbers inside the door, unplug it if it's covered, and Cooluli sends a free replacement power cord. |
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Mortgage rates just hit their lowest point in monthsThe average 30-year fixed rate slipped to roughly 6.5% on Monday, its lowest level in months, with one major tracker posting 6.54% for purchase loans. Housing economists expect rates to hold around 6.4% to 6.5% through the end of the year, so this is less a fire sale than a genuine window. If you're carrying a rate above 7% from the last two years, or weighing a downsizing purchase, it's worth running the numbers this week rather than waiting for a dramatic drop that forecasters don't see coming. |
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Your laptop may finally get to stay in the bagThe TSA has now brought CT scanners, the same technology hospitals use, to checkpoints at nearly 300 airports, including Atlanta, O'Hare, LAX, DFW, and JFK. In lanes with the new machines, laptops, liquids, and aerosols can stay packed. The catch: the rollout varies by airport and even by lane, so watch the signs and do what the officer says rather than what worked at your last airport. |
Remember When?
The Houston kid who became the world's dance partner
Patrick Swayze was born 74 years ago today, on August 18, 1952, in Houston, where his mother, a professional choreographer, ran a dance studio. He trained in ballet before Hollywood found him, which is why the lifts in Dirty Dancing look effortless: he'd been doing harder ones for years.
Between that film in 1987 and Ghost in 1990, Swayze spent a stretch as the leading man of American date night. He died of pancreatic cancer in 2009, at 57, still remembered less for any single line than for making an entire country believe it could dance.
Swayze at the Grammy Awards, February 1990. Photo: Alan Light
| Federal minimum wage | $2.30/hr → $7.25/hr |
| New LP record | $7.98 → $37 |
| Candy bar | 15¢ → $1.50–$1.80 |
| Gallon of whole milk | $1.42 → $4.31 |
Average U.S. prices; 2026 figures as of August. The federal minimum wage is shown — most states now set a higher one.
Test Yourself
| 1 | On August 18, 1920, Tennessee cast the deciding vote to ratify a constitutional amendment — after a 24-year-old legislator changed his mind at the last minute. What did the amendment guarantee? |
| 2 | Which Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Fame right fielder was born on this date in 1934, in Carolina, Puerto Rico? |
| 3 | Botanically speaking, which is the true berry — the banana or the strawberry? |
| 4 | The sandwich takes its name from an 18th-century English nobleman who wanted a meal he could eat without leaving the card table. Who was he? |
| 5 | What space epic opened in a handful of American theaters on May 25, 1977, and went on to change the movie business? |
Answers are near the bottom of today's email. No peeking.
Live Better
The medicine cabinet can make a heat wave more dangerous
Several common prescriptions — diuretics, beta blockers, antihistamines, antidepressants, and antipsychotics — can blunt the body's ability to sweat, hold onto fluids, or speed up the heart when temperatures climb, according to Harvard Health and the American Geriatrics Society's Health in Aging Foundation. None of that means stopping a medication on a hot day, which is genuinely dangerous.
It means knowing you may have less margin than the forecast suggests: more water, more shade, and outdoor work shifted to morning. Heat stroke — a body temperature above 104°F with confusion or fainting — is a 911 call, not a sit-down-and-see. If you take any of these daily, it's worth one question to your pharmacist about which apply to you.
Hurricane season's real peak is the next eight weeks
The season officially runs June through November, but NOAA's records show the danger is concentrated: the stretch from mid-August to mid-October accounts for 96% of all major-hurricane days on record, with the statistical peak on September 10. In other words, the season starts now, wherever a storm can reach you — coastal or not, since the costliest damage often comes from inland flooding.
Worth an hour this week: three days of water, food, and medications set aside, the gas tank kept above half, and a look at the roof, gutters, and anything in the yard that becomes a projectile in wind.
Medicare's drug-plan base premium is set for 2027 — up about 6%
CMS has set the 2027 Part D base premium at $41.33 a month, up from $38.99 this year. The 6% rise is the maximum allowed under current law through 2029, and it lands partly because a temporary subsidy program propping up standalone drug-plan premiums is ending.
What you'll actually pay depends on your specific plan, and those numbers arrive in September, one more reason to actually compare plans when Medicare's open enrollment starts October 15 instead of letting the current one auto-renew.
Enjoy Yourself
All seven seasons of SEAL Team land on Netflix today
David Boreanaz's military drama arrives on Netflix in full today — 114 episodes across seven seasons that ran on CBS and then Paramount+. It's a grounded, character-first take on special operations: less about explosions than about what the job costs the people who do it. If you missed it the first time around, this is the easy way in.
Peaches are as good right now as they will get all year
August is the deep middle of American peach season — Georgia and the Carolinas at full production, Colorado's western slope just hitting stride. This month's fruit is mostly freestone, meaning the pit pulls away clean instead of clinging.
Picking a good one takes two senses: it should smell like a peach at arm's length, and the flesh should give slightly at the shoulder. Skip the rock-hard ones; they were picked too soon and will soften without sweetening.
The first fall foliage forecasts are already out
Early predictions put Vermont's peak color around October 8–12, New Hampshire's around October 14–18, and Michigan and Wisconsin around October 11–17. The forecasts will sharpen as September arrives, but the practical point is the lodging: the good inns in leaf country book out weeks ahead of peak.
If a foliage drive is on the fall list, pick the week now and book something with a generous cancellation policy.
One Last Thing
1. Women's constitutional right to vote — the 19th Amendment. Tennessee's Harry Burn, 24, switched sides at the last minute, making his state the 36th and deciding ratification · 2. Roberto Clemente · 3. The banana — its seeds are inside, from a single flower; the strawberry's "seeds" on the outside make it an aggregate fruit, not a berry · 4. John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, whose 1762 order at the gaming table gave the meal its name · 5. Star Wars
The sun quietly passed a milestone
The world's installed solar power crossed 3 terawatts this year. The first terawatt took decades to build; the milestones now arrive roughly every two years, and analysts expect the total to triple again within a decade. However the energy debates play out, the panels themselves have stopped waiting.
More tomorrow. — The editors