Edition #23
Jalapeño white wine, carbs are back, the new Greek island to visit and a funny story about shrooms.
This week I was up late thinking about:
the complete lack of either shame or self-awareness of Elisabeth Holmes’ partner deciding to start a business that seems to be Theranos 2.0, a devastating post-Roe story from Handmaids Tale-era America, how being cringe is apparently “worse than being ugly” on dating apps, why FB isn’t doing anything about all the scams on Marketplace, how the internet is changing women’s voices (what can’t it do?!) and a weird AI recreation of Diddy’s trial for those who can’t bear not being allowed in
why chasing the young $$ isn’t always future-proofing for a business, a quietly perfect essay on lost youth and whether menopause is about to be optional
if taking shrooms could make me better at cooking, whether I want to start putting jalapeños in my white wine (unrelated) and how carbs are back (I cite the proof)
a new fashion uniform you’re about to see everywhere, Loewe’s latest raffia, a great suit I wore this week, and how you can buy real life things in Roblox now
the new cool Greek island, and other really good beaches to dream about now that it’s getting chilly
Let’s jump in…
In news that can only make you think some people truly believe the rest of us are absolute morons: the New York Times reports that Billy Evans, partner of Elisabeth Holmes (convicted Theranos founder who promised the world - and investors to the tune of US$700million - that they had “developed a blood-testing device that could run a slew of complex lab tests from a mere finger prick” when in fact they had developed… nothing) is now launching a “stealth start-up” that promises... wait for it... laser-powered instant diagnostics that will scan blood and use “deep learning” to detect cancer and infections “in a matter of seconds”. And this time it’s for pets! (At least to begin with.) Hard to believe this man woke up one day from the bed he sleeps in solo while his the mother of his children serves out the rest of her 11 year jail sentence and thought, “You know what the world needs from our family over any other business in the entire universe of potential businesses that I could go into? Another blood diagnostic miracle machine!” but the heart wants whatever grift the heart wants I guess.
Business of Fashion has a warning for any beauty brands banking too heavily on the “Sephora Tween”: Drunk Elephant’s sales have plummeted 65%, a hard lesson that Gen Alpha virality isn’t always good for business. Being so tween-coded can give older customers the ick, leaving no one behind once TikTok and those fickle tweens and their limited ability to buy $162 nighttime routines have moved on.
Speaking of the fickleness of youth, this is a really beautiful essay about the passing of years and the expectations we have of ourselves (it’s not really about parenting but I thought this passage was particularly poignant):
You might attend your 4-year-old daughter’s ballet recital, and, sitting in the dark auditorium, watching all the little bodies fumble sweetly across the stage, find yourself suddenly overwhelmed by thoughts of all the things that will inevitably happen to those bodies – the good and bad things, the pain and elation, the self-disgust and attempts at self-refinement – and you might feel a deep and disorienting sadness, a throbbing bubble in your stomach, which is the inverse of the comfortable smallness you feel when you read books about The History of The Universe. It’s a feeling akin to dread, and the thing you’re dreading (you’ll realize) is this: that Youth exists only so that it can be destroyed.
Which leads me to… A Vox article this week that asks: Is this the end of menopause? Thanks to new research aiming not just to treat symptoms but to actually delay or even eliminate menopause altogether, the hormonal shifts we’ve long considered a fact of life may soon be optional. “For the first time in medical history, we have the ability to potentially delay or eliminate menopause,” said Dr. Kutluk Oktay, a Yale reproductive surgeon. The story explores the fascinating but fraught frontier that promising longer healthspans while raising uncomfortable questions about why aging in women is always a thing we’re so desperate to fix.
Going through menopause early can be deeply upsetting to people, especially (though not exclusively) if they’re hoping to have children. But when it happens at the average time, this stage of life can come with social and emotional benefits, despite the physical challenges.
“It’s liberating,” Applewhite told me. “No more mood swings, no more worries about getting pregnant.”
“I don’t know any woman, including yourself, who wants to be bleeding every single month,” Denise Pines, creator of the menopause summit WisePause, told me.
Indeed, research has found that women often become happier as they age, especially after midlife — potentially because they’re less consumed with caring for children and other family members. Some anthropologists believe that female humans, unlike other animals, live beyond their reproductive years to help care for grandchildren (it’s called the “grandmother hypothesis”). But Minkin offered a more expansive view of this theory: In early human settlements, pregnant people couldn’t do heavy labor like moving rocks around. The grandmother was “somebody who moves the rocks,” she said. She also described postmenopausal women as “shooting saber-toothed tigers.”
Even the troublesome symptoms of menopause, such as hot flashes and night sweats, can be a useful “disruptor” in people’s lives, Pines said. “Where women have been so giving and outwardly focused, suddenly you have to focus on yourself.”
“That gives you a chance to reset everything else around you,” from relationships to career, Pines said. “It’s such a great time to really reimagine who we are.”
Are young people missing out on love due to their overwhelming fear of being seen as cringe? (A quality that includes such horrible behaviours as being emotionally honest, sincere, serious, not being funny/sarcastic enough and admitting that they're looking for a relationship. How could they?) Wired thinks so, interviewing a 25 year old who says “You can get away with being ugly, but being cringey is just like—that's a character that's imprinted on you.”
Sincerity, earnestness, irony-free declarations of contentment—these are all things many young adults edit out of their online personas. Much of what Gen Z considers “cringe” might strike others simply as directness and honesty, but one generation’s authenticity is another’s red flag. Young adults’ tendencies toward lightheartedness and jokes in their online self-presentation may point to the way many of them are dealing with feelings of vulnerability and disillusionment.
It is official, carbs are back. I cite three pieces of evidence:
1. Gwyneth was recently on the Goop podcast talking about loosening up on her previously restrictive diet, saying: “I’m a little sick of it if I’m honest. I’m getting back into eating some sourdough bread and some cheese. There, I said it. A little pasta.”
2. Rihanna has been running around this week touting Fendi’s realistic sheepskin baguette bag (not sure if there was an actual baguette inside it but she’s pregnant so I’d like to think so).
3. I polished off an entire packet of English muffins by myself. (I’m not pregnant.) They are, in my opinion, the only wet-weather weekend food worth getting out of bed for.
WWD reports that the new Gen Z uniform appearing on the street as the weather heats up in NYC is bermuda shorts and biker boots, which feels transeasonally workable for this hemisphere as well. Shorts-wise, I don’t own a pair myself but people are positively evangelic about these ones from Cos:
If your life is currently one big Greek itinerary doc and you’re already yawning at the mention of Mykonos beach clubs, Milos restaurants or Santorini sunset snaps, here’s your next pitch to the group chat: Folegandros. A little wilder, a little harder to get to, and a lot less sceney (for now). Touted, like all newly ‘discovered’ Greek islands, as ‘what Santorini used to feel like’, this airport-free Cycladic island is all whitewashed clifftop villages, Aegean views, and nights that end with wine-fuelled folk festivals in cobbled squares. After a soft launch last year, Gundari, the island’s first properly luxe hotel (they refer to themselves as ‘raw luxury’ which obviously means solar-heated private pools, unpolished marble, olive trees grown from scratch, a three-seat wine bar with cinematic ocean views, a subterranean spa, a sunken swim-up bar, a restaurant that serves food from its own organic farm, e-bikes, and a speedboat on call for sunset sails) is fully open for the 2025 season — a strong signal that Folegandros is about to have it’s moment in the sun.
Or for more travel inspiration, the annual list of the World’s 50 Best Beaches has been released, with Italy’s Cala Goloritze taking the top spot. (Australian entries were WA’s Turquoise Bay and Wharton Beach at #s 11 and 21 respectively and Fitzroy Island’s Nudey Beach at #37.)
In today’s edition of ‘really horrific things happening in America’: a 30 year old Georgia nurse and mother, Adriana Smith, has been kept on life support against her family’s wishes for three months after being declared brain-dead — not because there’s any hope of recovery, but because she was nine weeks pregnant at the time. Her grieving family has been denied the right to say goodbye, and is now facing the overwhelming medical costs of keeping her body alive and the terrifying prospect of raising a medically fragile child without its mother — all because state law treats her body as vessel first, human being second. The Cut reports:
…the medical team said they have no other option due to Georgia’s laws, which prohibit abortions once fetal cardiac activity is detected, or around six weeks of pregnancy. While the law makes exceptions when the pregnant person’s life is in danger, Smith’s case falls in a legal gray area: She is brain-dead, which means her life is no longer considered at risk, and her doctors claim they are legally required to keep her body on life support until the fetus reaches viability, according to Newkirk.
….
The pregnancy is now around 21 weeks of gestation, and doctors plan to keep Smith’s body alive until the fetus can survive outside her womb, Newkirk said. The medical team estimates that will happen around 32 weeks of pregnancy, and Smith’s pregnant body will then be induced. Newkirk said it has been torturous to see her daughter breathing while knowing she is no longer really there. She added that she often takes her grandson to visit Smith, and the child believes his mother is sleeping.
I went to three beautiful dinners over the past few weeks, which is a lot for my social battery. One was with Loewe to celebrate the new season of accessories in store. I am obsessed with the levelled-up new raffia pieces. Another was with Ralph Lauren, celebrating their Hamptons range, where I got to wear a supremely flattering tweed suit, and the last was to celebrate 100 years of Le Creuset, where the tables at Bennelong were a Gen Z dinner party dream, covered as they were in pots of all shapes and sizes in the limited edition 100 year ‘Flamme Dorée’ sparkly orange colourway.
While all the local mums are micro-dosing shrooms just to feel a little more alive on the school run, I very much enjoyed this anecdote from this week’s Garbage Day - who needs inner peace when you can channel your inner Italian and absolutely nail the ragu?
A user in r/shrooms (great community lol) revealed that her husband took a bunch of shrooms — 12 grams, which is a lot btw — and decided that he was an Italian chef in a past life. “He seemed very at peace and declared that he realized he was an Italian chef in a past life… Me and my mom were both very amused because he has never been a good cook.”
Well, apparently, he did connect with the spirit world during his mushroom trip because he ended up making the best pasta sauce she’s ever had. “My mom was rattled and said it was the best she's ever tasted and it was far superior to hers (and that's not something she'd ever easily admit). She even called it ‘perfect.’ Every single person who tasted it was amazed by it.”
According to one user in the comments, “It wasn’t a trip…. It was a spaghettaway.”
A true crime media company called Law&Crime is using AI and court transcripts to create an uncanny valley Hollywood version (ie where prosector Emily A. Johnson looks like she’s being played by Charlize Theron) of what’s going on inside the Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex trafficking trial, which is a federal case where cameras are prohibited.
In June the Royal Mint will release commemorative $1 coins honouring the iconic cakes of the AWW Birthday Cake Book, giving legal tender status to the most emotionally significant relic in Australian history. (If I had a dollar for every Smarties “1” cake I’ve had a slice of since my friends started having babies, I could’ve minted these myself.)
In other food news: the NYT says that Jalapeños sliced into savvy b is the drink of the moment, while according to Laura Jackson’s Glassette, the new wedding cake is desserts in a coupe tower (I love these ones). CHIC.
Fashion and beauty brands like Gucci, Coach and Givenchy have long been selling items for people’s avatars to wear in Roblox (with some items going for tens of thousands of dollars) but as of this week brands can sell real life products on there too (as part of the transaction buyers will get an item sent to them in real life and a version for their digital selves). According to Vogue Business:
Fenty’s new shoppable game offers the latest shade of its popular Gloss Bomb Universal Lip Luminizer, available exclusively in-game. When on Roblox, users can click a digital version of a physical product. A checkout window will pop up — not unlike a normal e-commerce site, with sizing options (for clothing), product information and a button to purchase. The familiar Shopify payment page appears and users check out as they would on any other platform, before returning to the game. They never have to leave Roblox.
After last month’s eye-dropping reporting on Meta’s horny AI chatbots, the WSJ is continuing to take the tech giant to task, this week by reporting on the scale of scams - from non-existent puppies to fake giveaways - on Facebook Marketplace (the part of the business keeping FB alive amongst younger people, but still beloved by olds who are particularly susceptible to scammers). In a motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging negligence in removing cryptocurrency impersonation scams last year, Meta noted that it “does not owe a duty to users” to address fraud on its platforms.
The company accounted for nearly half of all reported scams on Zelle for JPMorgan Chase between the summers of 2023 and 2024, according to a person familiar with the service. The peer-to-peer payment platform is owned by several banking giants, including JPMorgan, the country’s biggest bank, and Wells Fargo. Other banks that offer Zelle have experienced similarly high fraud claims originating on Meta, according to people familiar with the matter.
British and Australian regulators have found similar levels of fraud originating on Meta’s platforms. An internal analysis from 2022 described in company documents likewise found that 70% of newly active advertisers on the platform are promoting scams, illicit goods or “low quality” products.
T Magazine ran a really interesting story on how the female AI TikTok voice - known as Jessie - could potentially be changing the way women speak (and how we’re spoken to) in real life:
If the porn of the digital age has distorted, as many sociologists worry, young people’s sense of what an ideal sex life looks like, the ubiquity of narrated media in their lives may have also warped their idea of what the female voice is supposed to sound like — which is another way of saying how females are supposed to be in the world, how much noise they can make and according to which rules. A.I. is likely to learn from those real women’s voices, perhaps even the ones with the most followers, creating a potentially dizzying feedback loop of female murmurings rather than roars.
See you next week xxx