Edition #26

Lost property open for bidding, the funnest break-up, the best writing font, millennial mid-life crises, sauna races, Snooki nails, UTI news, sauna raves, Pinterest slop and more!

The Sydney Airport lost property auction is on this week, with money raised going to swim lessons for local children. (If you’re keen, jewellery and watches is on Wednesday, clothing, shoes and accessories on Thursday.) I once left a brand new Louis Vuitton handbag in the back of a seat on a Qantas flight and didn’t even realise until the ground staff tracked me down a week later because my phone was in my hand, the bag was empty, and my head was full, so if other people are as dumb as me I reckon there’ll be some great finds in there.

Also in auctions: a word to savvy buyers and sellers: Depop is in the kidswear space now.

God, hasn’t this week’s breakup between the world’s two greatest supervillains been thrilling to witness? Never have memes brought me so much joy. But a quick, solemn reminder from User Mag’s Taylor Lorenz that, in this case at least, even as he undoubtedly enters his rebrand era, our enemy’s enemy is still not our friend:

Musk is not suddenly some 2000s never-Trump Republican, he’s a megalomaniac billionaire who has shown blatant disregard for our democratic system. He has revealed himself to be deeply racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and has done irrevocable harm to our information and media environment through repeatedly platforming actual Nazis on X. He has attempted to dismantle journalistic institutions, killed children by cutting foreign aid, and terrorized countless women he’s fathered children with with. It’s extremely hypocritical of Khanna specifically to be posting things like, “Americans are sick of big money in politics” while trying to curry favor with a man who just admitted to buying an election.

I do not watch And Just Like That…, but I do love fonts, so this recap of S03E02 from Back Row’s Amy Odell caught my eye:

Carrie is rich enough to have a garden at her new place, and we see her writing there on her laptop. I know the point of this scene was to watch her get trampled by rats but all I saw was Courier New. I’d guess that authors sit down at the computer and select “Courier New” as the font when they’re writing a book as often as they wear statement heels to sit by themselves for a WFH session in their own private garden.

(If you’re interested, I’m currently working on a little writing project and my preferred font for writing is Amiri. Superior in every way.)

Amy also pointed us to this clip, where SJP admits to winning the all-time fashion lottery:

@wonderlandmagazineToo early to start dreaming of a Carrie Bradshaw archive museum exhibition? Because Sarah Jessica Parker is a keeper. #sarahjessicaparker #sjp #carrie #carriebradshaw #sexandthecity #sexandthecityreboot #andjustlikethat #fyp

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According to Vox, millennials are hitting their mid-life crisis era, but thankfully it looks a little different to how it has in the past.

Traditionally, if perhaps erroneously, our idea of a midlife crisis has long involved an older man leaving behind his home and family life for a red sports car, a too-young girlfriend, and perhaps some kind of hair dye, if not a hairpiece. This midlife crisis means trading away the parts of one’s life for something newer and younger. The only thing this archetypal man can’t trade in, of course, are the years he’s already lived.
In reality, that kind of implosion fantasy doesn’t resonate with many people. No one wants to be the guy who can’t see his own desperation, flailing against his own mortality. If a guy is indeed that guy, he wouldn’t allow himself to realize it. And it especially doesn’t ring true to millennials, now entering their 40s, the time when issues of having lived half your life traditionally start to arise. This is a generation that often can’t afford the home or family life to throw away, never mind the new sports car; one that grew up hyperconscious about mental health and the benefits of therapy, encouraged self-expression and open discussion about relationships, and found value in experiences.
Millennial lives don’t look like boomer or even Gen X lives, and neither do their midlife crises.
While in years past the midlife crisis might have been fueled by a dawning reaction to one’s own mortality, for new 40-somethings, it’s more like a progress report. For one thing, the stability that previous generations found stifling can be hard to find. Many are looking for an opportunity — a fitness journey, a new career, a personal awakening that might involve tattoos — instead of something necessitating an intervention.
What remains, however, is that creeping reality that we only have one life to live. It can’t help but feel a little like dying.

From WSJ: Along with ‘a job in finance’ and influencing, young men have a new career path to aspire to: stay-at-home son. (I dread to think what their mid-life crises will look like.)

The phrase “stay-at-home son” was added to the Urban Dictionary in 2007 as an insult to be hurled at an unmotivated man-child. Lately, though, members of the generation that brought us “quiet quitting” and “lazy-girl jobs” have embraced the label as an ironic badge of honor.
This graduation season is likely to produce a whole lot of stay-at-home sons. The overall unemployment rate is 4.2%, but 8.2% of 20- to 24-year-olds are jobless. The unemployment rate for men in that age range is even worse, 9.6%.

In The Cut’s modern parenting newsletter Brooding this week, Kathryn Jezer-Morton spoke to my very soul when she asked Can I Please Text Less, about how text creep has us beholden to incessant contact like never before.

Some people obviously enjoy texting, otherwise this kind of creep wouldn’t happen, right? This is the only way I can understand how this habit of constant contact has become a social expectation, and how texting creep has swallowed my day.
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The baseline level of polite text engagement has gotten too high. The people who text for fun, who think nothing of spending an entire Sunday afternoon looking at their phone, have become the pace cars. How did we let this happen?
I have two theories. One is that since so many of us are using the same tool (our phones) for work as we do for pleasure, we’ve allowed our professional expectations to define our social norms. In a workplace context, the feeling when someone is slow to reply to a text might be something along the lines of How am I supposed to do business like this? This makes sense when business is what you’re doing. But this logic has no place among friends and families trying to plan a get-together. If someone is slow to reply, it’s because they are living their life, which is the whole point. I think 24 hours is a perfectly reasonable window to reply to a text that isn’t urgent.
My second theory is that we have become accustomed to what the German philosopher Martin Heidegger called being on “standing reserve.” Heidegger’s theory first described how technological advancement was transforming life during the first half of the 20th century, but what he argued continues to resonate. Basically, he worried that by relating to the world through our use of technological tools, humans come to think of the entire world as being on standing reserve for us — waiting to be put to use, always at the ready, and only “real” insofar as it can be made useful.
He warned against applying that kind of thinking to other people, and I wonder if that’s part of what we do when we incessantly text one another. We are inciting each other to provide information, to be of use to each other, and for many of us this becomes its own form of social relation, a deranged kind of simulated warmth through the exchange of mundane bits of domestic data. I’ve done this before with moms I don’t know very well when I want to seem trustworthy and kind. Effusive texting with a relative stranger is an odd way to show solidarity, one that does not translate, for me anyway, into feelings of endearment. But I think that’s what it is meant to do.
When someone makes themselves unavailable, when they don’t respond to a text, we might, given how much fretting we do about screen time with children, commend them for their indifference to their own device. But we don’t; we get annoyed. I have a friend who is a notoriously indifferent texter. I once told her that I idolized her for being the worst text replyer of anyone I knew. “The price I pay,” she said, “is that people are mad at me all the time. Could you handle that?” I wonder if maybe I could.

Elise Loehnen wrote on her Substack this week about this weird little ChatGPT trick she called Psychic Cat Nip. I don’t know how it works but if you click the link it takes you to an automated ‘soul reading’ prompt that for Elise, myself and everyone else I know who tried it, was weirdly accurate. Freaky, stupid, woo-woo fun.

Are you getting big Covid vibes too recently? Retail’s having an existential crisis, media’s lying on the fainting couch, everyone’s apparently into granny hobbies like knitting and basketweaving (again), and now we’re seeing a trend called ‘domestic opulence’, something Fashion Journal defines as “a conscious elevation of everyday life to feel a little more, well, special. It’s where the home becomes a stage, a sanctuary and a modality for self-expression. It’s the investment of extra attention (and money) into your living space, rented or owned, before capturing images of that space for content’s sake." It’s basically the econ-downturn equivalent of pandemic-era homeowner improvements: think status lampshades in sharehouses, and people styling maximalist table settings in rentals like they’re prepping for an Arch Digest shoot (not a sharehouse dinner of lentil soup and two bottles of pet-nat).

Sometimes it feels like everything has been done before (see above), but this week i-D reported on a thing that felt new (at least to me): sauna raves - apparently a thing in NY and now moving into London.

By 8:30 p.m., guests dressed in floral bikinis and garish trunks begin to fill the sauna, swaying their glistening bodies to the percussive beats. At one point, a trombonist steps into the red-lit room, blasting jazzy notes alongside the house tracks. The sweat-soaked, boogying crowd claps, grooves, and cheers.
I begin to feel unpleasantly hot and step into the moon room for some cool air. By the bar, I spot Reza Merchant, who co-founded The Sanctuary with Avery, glinting with sweat. “It’s ultimately about stimulating senses and making people feel like they’re transported into a different world,” he says of the sauna rave, as our “Naked and Aimless” 0% mezcal cocktails are placed on the counter. I take a sip: acerbic orangey lime expands into a smoky, barbeque-like aftertaste. “It’s like the holy grail,” he says. “It’s having a reset without being hungover the next day.”

Meanwhile the Guardian reported on the rise of the dessert parlour as an alcohol-free and recession-friendly alternative to a restaurant booking or pub hang in the UK:

Since Creams opened its first outlet in 2011, the dessert shop has become a meeting point for a wide array of British society, from kids and teens, who take over such venues as a place to hang out after school or in the early evening, to family groups and other non-drinkers searching for an alcohol-free place to socialise into the evening, to gen Z mates who increasingly favour booze-free venues and have an eye for the pop of colour an elaborate dessert can add to their social media feeds.

Similarly, the Financial Times did a deep dive in London’s best bookshop bars, a level up from the bookshop cafe and yet another place designed to help facilitate IRL connection.

In recent years, bookshops with bars have opened across the city, serving locally brewed beer and natural wines at poetry open mics, author launches, and even speed-dating events, catering to a clientele increasingly dominated by Gen Z readers and devotees of BookTok, a TikTok community focused on literature. By integrating books with late-night bars, live music, writing workshops and singles socials, these bookshops with bars play the literary theme of a digital generation eager for organic connection.

The latest trend in manicures is the Snooki nail - yes, she of Jersey Shore fame. According to New Beauty:

If you were to scan the fingernails of any woman aged 16 to 30 on the packed beaches of the Jersey Shore circa 2008, all their summer manis would have exactly three things in common: they’re square, they’re long and they’re bougie. Whether the bougie nature comes from an over-the-top animal print design or an XXL French style, Jersey Shore nails are extra.

My husband has accused me of being too free range at times, but now Popsugar has given me a new definition for my parental style I can steer him toward: type C parenting.

These parents might, for example, show up to a birthday party on time . . . but their kid might be missing a shoe. They might bribe their child with candy, but only if it has five ingredients or less.
Instead of following rigid routines or a parenting plan the people in a Facebook group recommended, type C parents tend to be more flexible and willing to embrace the chaos. The method certainly has some benefits. "This approach nurtures well-rounded, emotionally secure children and fosters a deeper parent-child connection built on trust, empathy, and mutual respect," adolescent mental health expert Caroline Fenkel, DSW, says.

According to Business Insider, a culture clash is happening in golf, where the old guard is getting annoyed by younger people drawn to the sport’s old-money aesthetic. Um, suck it, boomers?

As the average age on the links decreases, hot topics in club boardrooms now include whether music should be allowed on the course and whether dress codes should enforce tucked-in shirt rules. "The clubs are trying to figure out a way to appease everyone without turning away a younger potential member who's going to be there and paying dues for many years," says Becker. "As the older guard resigns and starts to move on from their private club, things will start to stabilize. Right now it's a challenge."

PSA for the UTI girlies that this story from The Cut about how and why antibiotics don’t work (and may even make things worse), how the rules we’re told to follow (showering after sex etc) are inconsequential, and potential better solutions, is required reading.

“It’s been almost 100 years since Fleming discovered antibiotics,” Rohn says. “That’s still the first-line therapy, and it fails around 30 percent of the time. What kind of a men’s disease would still be using a 100-year-old therapy that doesn’t work?”

Whenever the subject of gaming comes up, I’m floored by the numbers. Over three billion people worldwide regularly play video games. Gaming revenue is bigger than all the revenue from movies, TV, and streaming combined. More than 48% of gamers are women, particularly when it comes to recent ‘cosy gaming’ hits like Animal Crossing (Switch) and Hello Kitty Adventure Island (mobile and Switch). And now, the latest global gaming phenomenon is another one that’s not so much bro-with-a-headset as it is girl-looking-for-a-boy-with-perfect-cheekbones. It’s called Love and Deepspace, and it’s essentially The Sims-meets-Interstellar-meets-fantasy boyfriend bootcamp. The premise (hold onto your hat here): you’re a female main character navigating a futuristic reality where you’ve lived dozens of past lives and must battle monsters called Wanderers while slowly recovering memories of your five extremely eligible exes. (Because what’s more realistic than being haunted by five men you used to date while trying to do your job?) And they are devastatingly handsome, in that softboi, super-chiselled K-Pop way. You flirt via text. You go on candlelit dates. You fight side-by-side in surreal, high-stakes battles. Sound fun? Lots of people think so. The game has over 50 million players globally in its first year and made AUD$101million in April of this year alone. According to Cosmopolitan US:

High spenders in the game get special VIP perks including a gift box with “handwritten notes” from the love interests and many women have said they’d rather spend their money on the guys in the game than go on actual dates. In China, where the game originates, players have the option to talk to the guys via their microphone and get AI-generated responses. It’s another example of AI as an open, nonjudgmental ear for our problems. Some players say the game has helped them realize what they were missing in their own real-life relationships. According to one redditor, the game helped them learn what it “means to be loved and treasured.” Some players are lobbying for the game to be rated 17+ so they can get even more explicit (it’s currently rated 12+ in the Apple Game Store).

Pinterest used to be the domain of mums and brides-to-be making mood boards for barn weddings. Then, somewhere in the post-Tumblr world, it quietly became one of the most comforting corners of the internet for Gen Z, who use it almost like a visual journal where you don’t have to perform or give hot takes, just collect. But, according to Fast Company, recently all the demographics are starting to be put off (and in some cases mass delete the app) because the rise of AI slop taking over the the platform. (My personal gripe is the ads - often more show up in my search results than the completely unrelated thing I've searched for, particularly when it comes to travel destinations.) There’s even a whole Reddit thread titled “Pinterest is 100% AI now?” where commenters report things like “I was looking for hair colour inspo and it was all AI. I couldn’t find a single human!” In response, in April, Pinterest started tagging AI-generated content using metadata and detection tools, and they’re testing a “see fewer” option in categories like home decor and food.

Although these features may help users declutter their homepages of AI content, the overall amount of AI generated content on Pinterest will likely keep growing. After studying Pinterest’s monthly data and trend reports for January through April 2025, the technology-focused newsletter Garbage Day wrote for Sherwood News that “every trend that Pinterest has specifically reported as growing since January 2025 has been saturated with pictures created by AI models.” In fact, the article asserts that all 16 trends in Pinterest’s April trends report contained multiple AI generated images in the top 20 search results.
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This concept is exactly what AI slop farmers on Pinterest such as Jesse Cunningham bank on. Cunningham openly admits to flooding Pinterest with AI content to make revenue. “I’m talking $10,000 per month on Pinterest . . . using AI images, using AI text,” he says in a YouTube video explaining his process.
“On my page, we do 50 to 80 [posts] a day,” he says. “We are presenting Pinterest with unique images every single time. This is why it’s hard to compete with AI.”

Related: the Pinterest Summer Trend Report noted that searches for digital detox ideas and digital detox vision boards are trending up by 72% and 273% respectively. The irony of people using a digital platform stuffed with digitally created images to create a digital vision board to get ideas on how to digitally detox is so rich, I might need to pin it.

Just in case you missed it (though, surely you didn’t?) Kylie Jenner - famed plastic surgery denier (boobs aside) - responded to a fans request for details behind her boob job with the exact tech specs: “445 cc, moderate profile, half under the muscle!!! Silicone!!! Garth Fisher!!! Hope this helps lol.”
If you have 445cc boobs already, I was sent a genuinely great big-boob bra this week from First Thing. It gives proper support without the usual over-engineered shape - a more modern, natural silhouette that still holds you up. I’m also a fan of their Everyday Bra, which is the platonic ideal of a t-shirt bra: smooth, simple, flattering, actually comfortable.

Would you spend days alone in the dark in the name of wellness? Wired reports on the latest wellness trend favoured by the rich and unravelled.

Darkness retreats remain niche, but they have become the latest extreme spiritual practice for founders, athletes, influencers, psychonauts, and yogis to attempt traversing and later flex about. Typically, a darkness retreat consists of several days alone in a room in complete darkness and silence. Participants are delivered three meals through a hatch that maintains the darkness in their dwellings, which also each contain a bed, bath, and flushing toilet. They can leave simply by opening the door, and they can also break their silence to chat with the facilitators at two intervals throughout the day when they come to the door to check on them and bring the food. Electronic items like phones or tablets are not allowed inside dark rooms, making it perhaps the ultimate dopamine fast. Imagine a meditation retreat, but alone, in the dark.
“It's meditation on steroids,” says Andrew Holecek, an author and lucid dreaming teacher. This might partially explain why short-on-time celebrities are embracing it. Four-time NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers has spent four days in the dark, as has comedian Tiffany Haddish, while NBA star Rudy Gobert and decorated former baller Dwight Howard did three days each. “It was the best thing I ever did,” Howard wrote afterward. “Life just feels simple again.”
But the possible benefits are in direct proportion to the risks, Holecek warns. “You can go to incredible depths really quickly. This is where the promise and the peril lies.”

Airmail published a report yesterday on the ‘open-secret’ of 53 year old actor, musician and aspiring cult leader Jared Leto’s behaviour with young women - particularly teenage-young - with nine women coming forward with accusations (which Leto’s reps have since denied].

Last month, the L.A.-based D.J. and music producer Allie Teilz reposted a 2012 Facebook status shed written to her Instagram stories:
"Youre not really in L.A. until Jared Leto tries to force himself on you backstage..In a kilt.. And a snow hat."
"I was assaulted and traumatized by this creep when I was 17, she wrote in another Instagram story. "He knew my age and didn't care. What he did was predatory, terrifying and unacceptable."
"He asked how old I was. I said, “’Im 16. How old are you?'" Leto was 36 at the time. [He’s now 53.] He asked for her number anyway.

Big news in my house this week: Holiday - who has rejected every expensive dog bed in favour of the sofa or the floor - has finally been tricked into a night of comfort by a dog bed that looks suspiciously like a very low human sofa. Snoozes achieved, her dignity intact.

See you next week xxx