Margaret and David – aka Australia’s best-loved critics – have reviewed 2020, and as usual they have wildly different opinions. Pure lols
This utterly brilliant contract tracing sketch made us laugh for about 20 minutes, and then cry for 5 minutes because it made us feel old (also, big ups to the actual NSW contract tracing team for all the overtime they’re putting in right now)
Lost income, postponed IVF, difficulties dating: it’s no surprise so many women are deeply afraid that the pandemic has stolen their chance to become mothers
An extraordinary piece in the Atlantic about the worldwide rise of genetic screening, and what that means for the future of Down Syndrome
2020 in pictures
Struggling what to say on Instagram, or even to post at all? You’re not alone (“Once I’d been off for a few weeks, it felt harder to imagine posting anything. When my grandmother died in May, nothing I wanted to say felt right. She died totally alone, as she’d been for months because of COVID, and there could be no funeral. How could a caption possibly explain anything so heavy? Normally if I was grieving, I would get together with friends and family. Trying to connect with them on social media was no comfort at all.”)
Here’s a brussels sprouts and bacon frittata for our northern hemisphere friends, and for our southern hemisphere pals, a raw tomato pasta dish that will make you never want to cook toms again
If makeup tutorials existed in 1999 (beware, extreme nostalgia for lip smackers and butterfly clips incoming)
Vanessa: “I’m not normally a big listener of audio books but this excerpt of Barack Obama reading aloud from his new book The Promised Land is such emotional, atmospheric, addictive listening that it’s seriously making me consider purchasing the audio version over the physical book”
When there’s chemistry on Zoom… but not so much in real life
Apparently for every face there are 7 matches somewhere in the world…! We learnt this fact while watching Finding My Twin Stranger, a short UK doco that follows researchers from the Department of Twin Research at St Thomas’ Hospital as they look for identical strangers (aka people who aren’t biological twins but look like they do). We also learnt there’s a site – Twin Strangers – which you can use to find your own doppelgänger (you can see some of their matches here and on Instagram)
This thought-provoking piece in the New Yorker about unlived lives will make you nostalgic for what could have been (“We have unlived lives for all sorts of reasons: because we make choices; because society constrains us; because events force our hand; most of all, because we are singular individuals, becoming more so with time.”)
A time capsule of music that got us through 2020 (what song will you add?)
How else to end the last 2020 issue of FRIDAY FOURTEEN but with a compilation clip of Timothée Chalamet laughing for a full minute? It’s actual therapy, we tell ya.
