What if someone is just making stuff up?

Years ago, I worked with the supermarket tabloid to make an ironic, shouty, somewhat funny book that has turned out to match much of the discourse we find surrounding us.
When we flew down to Florida to meet their team, I was amazed to discover that this nationwide newspaper, read by millions, was created by three people in a storage closet. They had a single filing cabinet with stock photos, and every day they went to work and invented stories about Bat Boys, UFOs and weird illnesses.

You weren’t supposed to believe this stuff, but of course, some people did.

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They believed it because the medium (a newspaper) was associated with something reputable (a real newspaper). Of course, the media has changed. The number of people reading a post or following an account is not a useful indicator of whether or not the ideas within are made up or not. And yes, people are still making stuff up.

Last weekend, Freddie and I went to see the Amy Sherald exhibit at The Whitney Museum. She paints portraits of Black Americans, both as a way to show people just being themselves and also to correct the omission of Black people in classic American portraiture. For example, this man sitting on a beam nods to the famous photo “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,” and the painting of two men kissing (above) references the 1945 photo of a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square. They’re stunning in person, and I’d highly recommend seeing the show, if you can!

I sent my friend Alison flowers this week, and the florist, knowing the goal was to comfort, added such beautiful wispy, feathery blooms. I was touched by the idea of women helping women help women.

We talked about Guinness cake and its “damp blackness” this week, but what about mud cake? Jenny Rosenstrach added salted chocolate frosting to her recipe, and, she says, “I swear I almost cried when I tasted the result, I had forgotten how effing amazing it was, simultaneously rich and chocolatey but with a decidedly springy texture.”

Finally, I’ve been reading Keith McNally’s memoir, and I have to say, it’s a banger. The New York restaurateur is unbelievably opinionated about everything from long walks (“I’d rather hike in unspectacular countryside than in the Himalayas”) to his mother (“there was always someone she felt ‘snubbed’ by”) to everyday phrases (“I doubt that I could love anyone who uses the phrase ‘reach out to’”). It’s fun to hear him rave and rage about restaurants, family, and life. If you’re in a memoir mood, here are a bunch of others we’ve loved, too.

Do you have clothes you’ve worn a million times? Mine include this shirt and these flats. So easy and comfy. (Here’s a steal version of the shoes.)

Status shows up whenever humans do, and it is the invisible underpinning of our culture.

The front lawn was only invented around the time of Columbus. The idea was to demonstrate that you had time and money to waste. You could take useful land and make it non-productive. You could take labor and put it to work taking care of this non-productive land with no obvious utility in return. A big front lawn, well cared for, was a sign of status and luxury.

It’s a contagious idea, and a sticky one. Many suburbs have it written into their laws.

John Green reminds us that Jay Gatsby paid to have a neighbor’s yard groomed before Daisy came over to meet him…

Most parenting manuals end up gathering dust on my bedside table, but Melinda Wenner Moyer’s Hello, Cruel World! isn’t one of them.

Hello, Cruel World!

The unfortunate thing about parenting books is that, in my experience, once you become a parent you are too time-poor and exhausted to read them. As a result, my bedside table is stacked with parenting manuals of which I’ve read the first five pages a dozen times before passing out. If this sounds like you, the latest book by science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer should be top of your pile.

We mostly breathe subconsciously, but columnist Helen Thomson finds evidence that the brain functions differently when inhaling or exhaling, or breathing through your nose or mouth.

When my kids get nervous or are having a meltdown, I instinctively tell them to take a deep breath. It’s a reflex that I know innately feels good during a moment of panic or before a big presentation. But new evidence suggests breathing does more than just oxygenate the body – it fundamentally changes our brain, decreasing anxiety, sharpening our senses and enhancing our ability to perform. Those breakthroughs have left me wondering: could I improve my day, just by using my breath better?