Michelle Obama got vulnerable in the Guardian this week about the guilt and anxiety of being a mother. Her writing is warm and personable and full of wisdom and it was just such a joy to read (even for those of us who don’t have kids)
This thoughtful piece published by Berkley University explains why we make up conspiracy theories about our partners and how to stop the cycle
We love an oral history and this one about the origins of Kath & Kim (it almost didn’t get made!) is so good
This week on the Elon Musk show: Turns out letting anyone verify their own fake Twitter accounts has real-world ramifications (who could have possibly foreseen???), the spat between Elon and ex Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey intensified, there was an unhinged email sent to Twitter employees with an embedded button they could press to quit, and while paid verification has been paused (for obvious reasons) it’s still scheduled to come back online later this month
In other tech news: Amazon is the next tech giant looking to lay off thousands of staff, TikTok is on track to make nearly $10 billion in ad revenue this year, you can now challenge your colleague to a game of Minesweeper in Microsoft Teams, RIP Deliveroo, Instagram is working on a 4:5 grid, and is Meta becoming the modern day MSN?
This absolute genius made a custom search filter on Twitter that immediately exposes everyone that you’re following who has paid Elon $8 for a blue tick
Here’s what happened when a journalist decided to accept every publicist pitch they got for an entire day (spoiler: he regretted it)
Oh good, climate change is eroding the pyramids in Egypt and causing Christmas tree shortages
A cheat sheet to carbon offsetting from the incomparable Sarah Wilson that debunks SO many misconceptions (we honestly don’t deserve her)
Interiors we bookmarked this week include Jess Hart’s LA home (the Spanish-style architecture is *chef’s kiss*), this serene Lake Lugano apartment, the yellow kitchen and every colourful tiled floor in this former Mexican schoolhouse, this moody 17th-century Northamptonshire house and the flat above the bookshop in the film Notting Hill (it’s on the market for a cool £2.375m if you can spare the cash?)
Birthday party ideas for grown-ups (so much gold in the comments)
We did very, very poorly on this quiz
Grace Loh Prasad’s essay on motherhood, loss and community is an important read for anyone struggling to find the support they need (“And so I come back to the orca and her lesson for me: I can’t bear the weight of my sadness alone. I need a pod to lessen the load, to help me carry what I can’t carry myself.”)
And in other news: Tips for cooking good-enough meals, Elizabeth Debicki discusses the pressure of recreating Diana’s ‘revenge dress’, climate change is coming for Christmas trees, every Pilates-goer’s dream, what your non-coffee order says about you (Vanessa: "I feel extremely seen”), going to the same dentist as your parents, if the Great British Bake Off illustrations were painfully accurate, how to use Google translate in a G Sheet, a long list of romantic movie recommendations, we’ve all played the red flags game before, this cat wins this trend, obsessed with the idea of having fake work conferences with our friends, TikTok has released the app’s 50 biggest creators of 2022, and who said it: Elon Musk or Mr Burns?
