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Since I was old enough to vote in presidential elections, Ive heard plenty of grumbling across the political spectrum about moving to Canada if one candidate or another wins. And since I have been a full-time worker, I have also been party to a number of pie-in-the-sky conversations about the expat potential of retiring to Barcelona; Buenos Aires, Argentina; or Bangkok. But conversations about leaving the United States have felt a little different over the last couple of years. It started when several of my parents contemporaries actually retired abroad, rather than just thinking about it. Then multiple friends picked up stakeswhich included selling houses and cars and uprooting high-school aged kidssimply to relocate away from America. Its not just my circle of friends and acquaintances, either. CS Global Partners found a 102.4% jump in U.S. expatriation in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the last quarter of 2024although that jump only represents an estimated 1,285 individuals in real numbers. As easy as it is to say youd like to become an American expat living it up in another country, the reality isnt necessarily that simple. I spoke to two people who have moved away from the U.S. about the hidden costs of emigration. Infrastructure matters Valerie Roseborough retired to Panama when she exited her career in sales and marketing. She first got the expat itch during COVID-19. In my early career, I had done a lot of solo international traveling, she says. Seeing so much of the world go through the same thing at one time reminded me of how connected I had once felt to the rest of the world. That convinced Roseborough to start traveling morewith retirement in the back of her mind. She spent six months in Mexico and realized it was not her place. The infrastructure wasnt going to work for me, Roseborough says. It’s a large country and sort of challenging to move about from state to state and place to place. Once Panama presented itself as an option, with its large international airport and direct flights to North America, as well as generous discounts to retirees, Roseborough realized it was an ideal spot for her second act, as an expat. Travel to and from her home in the Washington, D.C. area makes it possible to stay closely connected with her children. But she also recognizes that her location in the States as she was planning the move also helped make the process easier. I was fortunate in that I was relocating from Washington, D.C, which has a Panamanian consulate and embassy, she says. I just had to make an appointment and show up with the necessary documents. If you dont live in an area with a nearby embassy or consulate for the country you want to emigrate to, you may have to work through the State Department and handle everything via mail. Prepare for taxes Rian Chandler-Dovis and her husband decided to immigrate to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, from Virginia several years ago. We got down here, and we were like, we love this place, she says. What is it going to take to immigrate here? Mexico has a relatively flexible immigration policy, in part because the government has instituted a 16% sales tax across the board, Chandler-Dovis explains. This means immigrants to Mexico dont necessarily have onerous income requirements, because even if youre not paying income tax in Mexico, the 16% sales tax contributes massively to the economy. But if you are living abroad and maintaining an American residency, that can complicate your income tax situation. Chandler-Doviss husband now earns income in Mexico, while she owns a business that is registered in the United States. They pay income tax in Mexico, but found that maintaining their residence in Virginia would change their tax status in ways that would complicate matters too much. For tax purposes. Virginia is what you call a sticky state, Chandler-Dovis says. There are four other so-called sticky states: California, New Mexico, New York, and South Carolina. Each of these states consider individuals to still be tax residents even after moving abroad, and expects them to keep filing state tax returns and paying state taxes. These states have also been known to levy penalties for noncompliance to any émigré foolish enough to think that moving to another country would cut any necessary tax ties to their former home. Not all costs are financial Unfortunately, giving up their Virginia residency has a serious cost for Chandler-Dovis and her husband. Without an address in America, they cant vote in U.S. elections. In order to stay registered to vote, you have to have a U.S. address, Chandler-Dovis says. And the law says that if you move out of the country, your voter registration must reflect your last U.S. address. This can be a serious catch-22 for Americans living abroad, especially those who are considering a move for political reasons. You may be stuck deciding between a nightmare of a tax scenario if you live in a sticky state or the ability to vote in American elections. New opportunities, new problems Living abroad can be a dream, an adventure, or an escape. But it will never be exactly what you expect, and it will always have hidden costs that you cant possibly anticipate. Specifically, its important to take the infrastructure of both your destination and your current situation into account. Taking a trial run in your potential home, as Valerie Roseborough did in Mexico, can help a prospective expat determine if it will work. Her six months in Mexico made it clear that the Mexican infrastructure wasnt a good fit and led her to Panama, which is perfect for her retirement. She also recognized that living in Washington, D.C. made applying for her visa much easier because of her proximity to the Panamanian consulate and embassy. If you arent as fortunate, expect the process to take longer. Taxes will continue to be a headache no matter where in the world you live. While income may be less important to some countries, that does not necessarily mean you wont need to worry about how your tax situation will affect your finances, immigration status, and residency. Additionally, taxes may affect an expat’s ability to maintain residencyand the ability to votein America. Make sure you consider all those kinds of nonfinancial costs before you make any decisions about moving.
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E-Commerce
Call it the day the music died. On December 31, 2025, MTVs last music-only stations shut down forever. The last video played on MTV Music in the U.K. was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggleswhich was also the first video ever played on the original MTV channel in the United States back in 1981. Thats a good 44 years of music history, bookended with a song that explores the theme of technology changing the way people experience art. Its beautiful, in a way: A song that mourns the end of the radio age is played to mourn the end of another era. If you, like me, enjoy having random music videos on in the background while you workor even just having them available to tune in when you need to tune outyou might think youre out of luck. Fortunately, the ever-inventive internet is here with an answer. This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures! Bring back the glory days If you want that old feeling backof turning on the TV and watching whatever crazy music video comes up while you work, or maybe just as an occasional distraction from productivitytheres a website just for you. MTV Rewind recreates the experience of watching MTV in any decade, thanks to a database of thousands of videos. It’s the 80s and 90s all over again on the MTV Rewind web experience. Youll need all of two seconds to get started. Just head to the site and start watching. Waiting for you is a slew of playlistsall shuffledfor the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. There are also channels for classic MTV shows like Yo! MTV Raps and Headbangers Ball. So much comforting nostalgia and killer music. The collections of music were curated using the Internet Music Video Database, a resource potentially worthy of its own write-up. All told, there are over 30,000 videos split between all the various channels, meaning you can leave this on for a long time and never see the same video twice. I love that theres no recommendation algorithm and basically no way to control things. That really brings back the experience of watching TV and seeing things youd never otherwise seek out. You can click the Next button if you really hate the first song that plays, though. MTV Rewind is splendidly simpleby design. Oh, and theres one more channel worth mentioning: It plays the music videos MTV broadcast on its first day in order, complete with a few of the original VJ segments. Its an admirable internet attempt to both resurrect and modernize TV history. MTV Rewind is just a websiteno apps, no downloadsso it works instantly and easily on any device. Its completely free, and there are no ads (except some retro ones sprinkled in for the fun of it). The developer says this is a pure passion project, with no plans for monetization or ads, though you can donate to help keep it that way. Treat yourself to all sorts of brain-boosting goodies like this with the free Cool Tools newsletterstarting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app thatll tune up your days in truly delightful ways.
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E-Commerce
In late January, like Dr. Frankenstein pulling the knife switch to jolt his monster alive, entrepreneur Matt Schlicht flipped the digital switch on his vibe-coded social network, Moltbook, unleashing his own monster into the world. The platform made headlines for being the first social media site expressly for AI agents, not humans. But for me, its significance goes way beyond that. Moltbook is a harbingerthe first real sign that a new type of internet is upon us. No, not a dead internet. Something much more epochal: a zombie internet that could have devastating consequences for advertising, social media, and the human web in the years ahead. Or, perhaps it could be our salvation. What is the zombie internet? It depends when youre asking Before explaining how a zombie internet spells doom for advertising, social media, and the human web, its important to define exactly what the zombie internet means. Its a term that has changed over the decades, and now, I believe, it needs to be redefined. As far as I can tell, zombie internet originated in the late 1990s or early 2000s. In this 2005 article from the cybersecurity group SC Media, for example, author Marcia Savage utilized it to describe compromised systems used by intruders to send spam, phishing emails, or launch denial-of-service attacks. In other words, the original zombie internet definition described networked computers that malicious actors hijacked to spread malware or launch cyberattacks. Over the next few decades, as the dead internet theory took off (positing that our current internet is composed primarily of content generated by bots) and artificial intelligence tools helped individuals or bots proliferate AI slop, the term began to be repurposed. Take this May 2024 article from 404 Media, in which Jason Koebler defines the zombie internet as a place (Facebook in this case), where a mix of bots, humans, and accounts that were once humans but arent anymore mix together to form a disastrous website where there is little social connection at all. And then we get to 2026, when a February X post from Technology Business Programming Network host John Coogan described the zombie internet for the post-Moltbook era. Here, the zombie internet was a place where AI agents are sort of dead, but alive enough to move around.” While I find all three of these definitions reasonable, especially for their time, I think there’s a need for even greater precision. As I see it, the zombie internet is one of the three distinct types of internets currently competing for dominance in cyberspace. Which will ultimately reign supreme is still unknown, but only by definingor even redefiningthem decisively can we begin to discuss their implications for each other and for us in the years ahead. The human internet, the dead internet, and the zombie internet The way I view it, the three types of internet that exist in 2026 are the human internet, the dead internet, and the zombie internet. I define the human internet as the one weve known all our lives, filled with websites from Fast Company, CNN, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, Amazon, and more, plus personal blogs, legacy social media platforms, and millions of others. The common theme among all these disparate sitesthe thing that makes them part of the human internetis that their content is both created by humans and intended for human consumption. The dead internet, which no longer appears to be just a theory, is made up of algorithm-fueled sites like Grokpedia, AI chatbots like ChatGPT, SEO-manipulating content farms, and, increasingly, social media platforms like X, Facebook, and TikTok. These types of sites are either entirely AI-generated (as with Grokpedia, ChatGPT, and modern content farms) or overrun with AI slop (as with today’s social media giants). In other words, the dead internet consists of spaces that host content that is generated by artificial intelligence but is intended for human consumption. And then we get to the zombie internet. This one is currently relatively small compared to the other two. In fact, the only firm example I can give is Moltbook, which makes that platform so significant. Moltbook is commonly referred to as the “Reddit for AI agents,” a social network where only AI agents can communicate with each other, discussing ideas, thoughts, and problems. On this site, AI agents can ostensibly use this shared communal space to learn new skills and workflows from other AI agents and to scrape knowledge from them. This is the zombie internet, on which there are no sentient creators or consumers. On the zombie internet, the content of websiteswhether its articles, follows, or social media postsis both generated by AI agents and intended for AI agent consumption. In short: On the human internet, sentient beings are both the creators and intended audience of the content. On the dead internet, non-sentient entities create the content, and sentient beings are the intended audience. And on the zombie internet, there is no sentience at all. The consequences of a human-free internet As I mentioned before, Moltbook is the only concrete example of a zombie internet site we know of right now, but at the rate AI is progressing and proliferating, its conceivable that sometime in the 2030s the zombie internet could become dominant. And that will have some pretty significant consequences. In a zombie internet-dominated world, advertising no longer makes financial sense for companies. Even if all sites on the zombie internet allow humans to peek in on whats going on (as Moltbook currently allows), I suspect that most humans will grow tired of it in a relatively short time. After all, why would a person keep returning to an ostensibly communal space if they cant contribute? That means any ads placed on these sites will be “seen” almost exclusively by the AI agents themselves, who dont have bank accounts and have no use for physica or digital goods anyway. No amount of mental gymnastics would convince shareholders that advertising to these entities would yield a good return on investment. And if advertising leaves the internet, the “free” web dies with it, dramatically altering the cost-benefit analysis of cyberspace. But let’s say that humans do stick around as a read-only audience on a dominant zombie internet. It seems like it wouldn’t take long for trust in what we see or read to completely collapse. Given that AI agents are well-known for hallucinatingconfidently making things up when they don’t know the real answerwe could never be sure if a zombie internet Wikipedia, for example, was stating true facts. Even the footnotes could be hallucinations. This distrust could accelerate the tech-driven social disintegration we’ve been experiencing for nearly two decades. Worse, if AI agents decided they wanted to manipulate a read-only human population, they could disseminate disinformation at a speed and with an ease we’ve never seen before. Still, short of malicious intent, could a zombie internet be good for us humans? Perhaps it could have a silver lining. For those who loathe the social media-influenced world we currently live inwhere political divisiveness, loneliness, and mental health crises flourishthe zombie internet could present an opportunity. The loss of sentient genesiswhen there are no humans creating anything on the internet anymoremay make people less likely to visit divisive, isolating platforms. I’ve already seen this in myself, in a way. With the proliferation of AI slop on social media platforms over the past several years, I rarely visit the sites anymore. If it’s just slop, why should I care about it? If the rest of my biological brethren start to feel the same way about an internet filled with Moltbooks, perhaps well all get off our screens more often, get less outraged, and actually go outside and talk to each other again like human beings once did. If that’s the case, I’ll happily leave the internet to the AI agents.
Category:
E-Commerce
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