Society

The text that revives old friendships without making things weird

It’s amazing what ten words can do.

Somehow you don’t know it’s happened until it has, but one day you think of that friend and realize it’s been so long that unless you’ve got a good excuse, reaching out would be... weird.

A networking expert has a disarmingly simple answer for that exact modern dilemma: send the text anyway, just strip out all the pressure, apology, and emotional throat-clearing. Her suggested message is only 10 words long, and it somehow does the impossible by making reconnection feel casual, warm, and not like you’re trying to reboot a canceled sitcom.

As Erik Barnes explains, what makes it work is what it avoids. No “sorry it’s been forever,” no fake urgency, no giant bundle of expectation dropped into someone else’s notifications. Just a small human signal that says: I thought of you. That’s it. Clean, brave, oddly powerful.

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Health

A doctor says your shower is too long, too hot, and doing too much

The debate is heated enough to warm your water.

My wife loves a long shower. And hot. Shockingly hot. I’m not sure her goal is clean so much as sterile. I don’t mind. I can catch up on TV while she emerges squeaky clean and reborn. Experts, on the other hand, would like a quiet word.

The latest thinking on showering is almost offensively minimalist. No more than five minutes. The logic is annoyingly solid: less water wasted and less dried-out skin.

Then comes the part that really throws the loofah at the wall. Some dermatologists say you do not need to soap your whole body every day. Just the key areas: armpits, groin, feet. Of course, the internet has thoughts. In this story by Cecily Knobler, drawing on reporting from Pang-Chieh Ho and Angela Haupt, the science is straightforward. The human reaction is where it gets very fun.

Yesterday’s verdict

In yesterday’s issue of The Daily GOOD, we shared an expert’s tips for surviving the lull in a conversation. How do GOOD readers handle the dreaded conversational silence? 37.5% of you fill the gaps with a good old-fashioned overshare, and I count myself among you!

• I wait silently and savor the delightful awkwardness. (30.6%)

• I panic and ask a question so vague it barely qualifies as language. (20.8%)

• I excuse myself to visit an imaginary friend that just came in. (11.1%)

• I start oversharing. Anything but silence. (37.5%)

Health

The weird anti-anxiety advice that starts with doing a terrible job

A few surprisingly unglamorous habits might calm the spiral faster than you think.

Perfectionism and anxiety go hand in hand. We all know that, but when it comes time to address anxiety, anxiety is the only part of the equation we think about. Perfectionism is a constant we're not allowed to change. Well, as Olivia Remes reports, that might be exactly backwards.

One of the more surprising ideas here is not to breathe more deeply, think more happily, or somehow become a calmer, better version of yourself on command. It's to loosen your grip. Do the task badly. Start before you're ready. Let the first attempt be uneven, awkward, or incomplete. Which sounds wrong right up until it starts sounding like relief.

A few small shifts that feel almost too simple to work are all it takes. Put off the spiral instead of letting it swallow the day. Stop treating every mistake like evidence for the prosecution. Then comes the bigger turn: getting out of your own head may have less to do with mastering your thoughts and more to do with remembering that other people exist.

On March 26, 1995, Europe tried something radical: seven countries, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain, began removing routine passport checks at their shared borders. 

The idea had been born a decade earlier, in 1985, when five governments signed the original Schengen Agreement near the Luxembourg village of Schengen, and was then fleshed out in a 1990 convention covering visas, police cooperation, and a shared external border framework.

It was received with both excitement and anxiety: to supporters, it made Europe feel tangible and everyday; to critics, it raised worries about crime, migration, and lost national control, concerns that showed up almost immediately when France temporarily restored some controls in 1995.

Still, Schengen changed daily life in ways that were hard to reverse, making cross-border commuting, tourism, study, and trade dramatically easier and turning “Europe without frontiers” from a slogan into a lived experience.

Today, despite periodic internal checks during crises, Schengen remains one of the clearest symbols of European integration. As of January 1, 2025, Bulgaria and Romania are full members, bringing the area to 29 countries.

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