📲 Texts get through when calls can’t

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Ian was an infant. I was asleep in a chair with him in my arms when Barry came in and whispered, “You have to get up and see what’s happening on the TV.” I put Ian in his bassinet, walked into the family room and said, “You got me up to see some scene in a movie?”

It wasn’t a movie. On the morning of September 11, 2001, we watched the horror unfold. Millions of Americans picked up the phone at the same moment. A business associate reached me and asked me to get word to his wife that he was OK.

The wireless network never went down. It filled up. Verizon carried close to double its normal traffic that day. Rescue workers at the towers couldn’t get calls through.

Then came the physical damage. Verizon’s building at 140 West Street sat across from the World Trade Center. Inside were roughly 300,000 phone lines, millions of data circuits and the city’s main 911 switch. When the towers fell, the walls were crushed, and the cable vaults flooded.

Twenty-five years later, the useful lesson isn’t limited to that day. A network does not have to be destroyed to be useless to you. It only has to be busy. Same story in hurricanes, wildfires and blackouts.

Here is what gets through.

A voice call holds a channel open the whole time you talk. A text is a tiny packet that keeps retrying until it finds a gap. When a whole country picks up at once, texts land while calls do not.

Before an emergency happens, turn on Wi-Fi calling. If the towers are jammed but your internet is fine, your phone routes around the problem. 

Local circuits jam first. So the immediate family doesn’t call each other. Everyone checks in with one relative outside the area, who keeps a list and passes it along. Pick that person tonight and tell them the job.

Then write three phone numbers on a card for your wallet. Nobody has memorized a number since 1998, and a dead phone takes the whole address book with it.

Last one: Charge the battery bank in your closet. The most common communication failure in a disaster is not the network. It is a phone at 4%.

Do it tonight, and you won’t think about it again until the day it matters.

📩 Send this to someone who has family in a hurricane state.

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While everyone is obsessing over smart glasses, AR contact lenses are seeing into the future. A whole computer. In your eyes. There’s a reason you aren’t wearing them yet. That’s 20/20 vision.

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🎯 Cart blanche: This’ll make you want to check the bottom of your Target cart. An employee showed TikTok viewers a tracker attached to a red cart that can sync with smart ceiling lights, mapping your movement through the store. The system’s been in place since 2017, studying shopping behavior, watching you circle the snack aisle twice. Turning off phone location sharing may limit app-based tracking, but it won’t remove the sensor. Turns out the cart remembers your trip better than you do.

The need for less speed: Get this. Traffic engineers are slowing down speeders with more green lights, not red. Drive the speed limit, and the traffic lights may wave you through. Speed, and they can hand you a red light at the next block like a tiny municipal time-out. Still early testing, but results are promising out of Albuquerque and Portland, Ore. Why did the traffic light turn red? You would, too, if you had to change in the middle of the street.

🔥 Yesterday was better. Today still works: The best time to start supporting your wellness goals was yesterday. The second-best time is today. I take GLP-1 Support every day because it helps support my body’s natural GLP-1 response, so I feel satisfied longer and make healthier food choices.** It’s stimulant-free, made in the USA with premium, clinically studied ingredients and simple enough to stick with. Start today and get up to 50% off, plus free shipping and a gift.

Spud check: I laughed when I saw a frustrated Uber customer ask support to type “potato” to prove a human was there. Instead, the customer got a canned corporate refusal. The issue was a refund. The exchange sums up modern customer service: You prove you’re real while the company sends wallpaper. Somehow, even one vegetable name was outside its authority. Need someone? Say or type “I’m returning your call” or “representative.” That works.

🪐 A stellar lineup: My brother-in-law Bill just got a telescope. Get this! All five naked-eye planets are on this month’s schedule: Venus blazing low in the southwest at dusk and peaking Sept. 18, Saturn at its brightest in years all night, Mars and Jupiter before dawn, Mercury sneaking in during the final week. No telescope, no app, no fee. Best show in town, and the parking is your driveway.

🎧 The only earbuds in my bag: I’ve tried them all. The $300 pair, the $200 pair, the ones that promised to change my life. (They didn’t.) Raycon’s are the ones I keep coming back to. Hours of battery, rich sound that’s not tinny and noise cancellation that actually works on a plane. All for a fraction of what AirPods cost. I’d tell a friend. I’m telling you. Grab Raycon earbuds and get 20% off today.* 

ChatGPT can turn your terrible doodle into art: Type @Sketch into the prompt box and scribble something right there with your mouse, full MS Paint nostalgia. Describe what you’re going for, like “a realistic version of this white cat,” and it renders an accurate image. Still not right? Comment “make the eyes blue,” and it redraws instantly. Free accounts get it, too. 

📈 Old phones, new prices: Keynote week usually means last year’s iPhones get cheaper. Not this year. Apple raised prices across the older lineup: iPhone 17 is now $899, the 16 runs $799, the 17e $699 and the Air $1,099. Apple calls the hikes unavoidable, pointing at the memory shortage AI data centers created. So the phone you didn’t upgrade to got pricier while you weren’t looking. Procrastination finally charges a fee.

🤫 Spotify doesn’t have to remember everything: On mobile, tap your profile picture > Settings and privacy > Privacy and social > Private session. Your listening stays off your recents and profile and won’t touch your recommendations or Wrapped while it’s on. Switches off after six hours or whenever Spotify restarts. Your secret’s safe, even the Nickelback phase.

📺 Netflix doesn’t have to keep playing while you sleep: On the web, go to Account > Manage profiles > your profile > Playback settings, and switch off Autoplay next episode. One accidental nap no longer turns into seven “watched” episodes. While you’re there, kill Autoplay previews. No more surprise sound blasting while you browse.

🏞️ Planning on visiting a national park? Use the official NPS website instead of relying on third-party apps. You’ll find trails, directions, things to do, alerts, fees and the rules you should know before you go. FYI, it also lists the 2026 entrance FEE-FREE days aka Sept. 17, Oct. 27 and Nov. 11. Three dates when the views look expensive, but getting in isn’t. 😌

Be on the show! Got a question only I can answer? Spill it here. You might end up on the air with me. 

Deepfakes have gotten so convincing that Apple is asking your camera to provide proof a photo is real. 

The iPhone 18 Pro’s Reference Image feature records a second copy of your shot using signed data directly from the sensor. It stays locked forever, basically a digital negative. Switch on Reference Mode before you shoot. 

Great for accidents, insurance disputes and anyone claiming “that scratch was already there.”

Check it out in the keynote here.

🎓 What you learned today: Texts can beat calls when networks jam, Target carts may track store movement, green lights could become speed-limit nudges, five planets are visible this month and Apple’s new photo proof feature adds a digital “receipt for reality.” Not bad for one email. 

🕯️ Shining commemoration: Tonight at dusk in Lower Manhattan, 88 searchlights switch on, arranged in two squares on the footprints where the twin towers stood. The beams climb 4 miles into the sky. On a clear night, you can see them from 60 miles away.

Twenty-five years. We still light the sky, so nobody forgets the shape of what stood there.

You spent today’s issue getting your phone ready for the worst day. Use it tonight for an ordinary one. Call somebody you love for no reason at all. Let it ring twice and hear them say hello. That was always the whole point of the network. 

One more thing. If you’ve been putting off a website, Hostinger took that excuse away. Describe what you want, the AI builds it and they’ll move your old site over for free. Plans start at $2.99 a month. I used it and it is incredible. Really. Go to hostinger.com/kim.* Then, let me know what you made!

Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily

🏆 THE KIM CHALLENGE: Forward this to ONE person who needs to hear it today. Pick the person who popped into your head while reading. You know who it is.

Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, eufy, Victoper, Apple

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