✍️ Ten Things #251
Trigger warnings, miracles, Birkenstocks, steroids
Photo by Morgane Bigault
Hi friends,
In two weeks (or less!) we’ll have a new baby. I’ve been on a tidying bender — reconfiguring storage crates, labelling shoeboxes, assembling baby gear, emptying the loft eaves, weeding the garden. I believe it’s what some (definitely not me) call ‘nesting’. It mostly just feels like I’m having a breakdown!!!
We also potty trained our firstborn because people say you must do that before you have a second child. (It’s gone great except for some ‘stool withholding’, which is a disgusting phrase that I now know intimately.)
All of that’s to say that there’s been little time for writing these emails. Until today.
How are you? Not withholding stool, I hope.
Your friend,
Luke xo
P.S. If you’re in London, my pal Mike recently launched The London Minute. It’s a newsletter marrying essential London news with niche but important dog-related stories like this.
Ten Things
1. 💿 Lawrence — Family Business
These guys are a pop-funk machine and this album exudes pure joy! (Bonus: check out their glorious “acoustic-ish” sessions on YouTube.)
2. 📻 Search Engine — What do trigger warnings actually do?
Turns out all those TWs might do more harm than good.
3. 📺 The Responder
Martin Freeman is majestic as a beleaguered Liverpudlian policeman trying to hold it together. The show’s relentlessly bleak and, occasionally, very funny.
It’s hard to sum up this Norwegian documentary, which centres around two siblings who think they’ve found a spitting image of their dead sister. My friend Stina implored me to watch it (“It’s crazy and good! Crazy good!") and now I’m doing the same to you.
5. 📝 The ballad of Birkenstock
The Succession-esque story of how Birkenstock took over the world. (I just bought these as an alternative.)
6. 📝 The man who couldn’t stop going to college
Once was more than enough for me but hats off to Benjamin B. Bolger (wow, what a name).
7. 📝 No one buys books
A wild look at the book industry, including stats like this: 96% of books sell less than 1,000 copies.
8. 📝 I will fucking piledrive you if you mention AI again
Send this to your LinkedIn bros.
9. 📝 Why is everyone on steroids now?
I was thinking about it but this article really put me off.
10. 📚 Colum McCann with Diane Foley — American Mother
US journalist James Foley was held for two years and then executed by Islamic State. In this book, his mother tells her story. It’s part thriller, part memoir — heartbreaking and beautiful.
My friend Lloyd (who runs the outstanding Libreria bookshop and recommended the book to me) recorded an in-depth podcast about the book with the co-author, Colum McCann. It’s a great listen.