Before turning to the four-day pause to permit the release of hostages held by Hamas and the delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza, I want to address the top comment from a reader posted in response to yesterday’s newsletter. The reader said (in part), Today I’m fighting despair because of the voting rights decision, Univision’s takeover, the seemingly never-ending coverage of DJT, and the war in Gaza. So... what to do?

Every seven years, it seems, Demi Moore is expensively chopped, dropped, shaved,  airbrushed and hydraulically re-sexualized for a new demographic of boner-attention.   The X-Box contingent is discovering, today, what the Gen-X boys witnessed before them: Despite Repeated Motherhood, Demi (through a vigorous combination of rude will and 6-digit surgeries) Is Still Fuckable! (see Kutcher, Ashton; Dude, Where’s My Mom?) In 1996, La Moore was paid $12.5m -- the highest fee any actress had ever been paid, at that point – to unveil her Demispheres in the movie Striptease, to the delight of several sweaty,  jism-clogged fans worldwide.

Fun fact - you know me as a beauty journalist, but I actually started my career in music journalism, and I’ve written about metal for the likes of NME, Kerrang, Rock Sound and ATP since I was a teen. So yesterday’s column on a corpse paint beauty collab was totally my jam, so much so that I ended up writing an extra column on the wild history corpse paint and how it became synonymous with the black metal scene.

I'm a huge fan of crunchy green salads with walnuts!! And snap peas in general. All the cheffy people (we/me/us food writers) do all this stuff by instinct, like blanching and shocking fresh peas, but this is a good reminder how many recipes and even books assume everyone knows this. Your visual guide is so great and I love how deeply you serve your audience. It's inspiring. xx Expand full comment

Danny Casolaro’s goal to uncover The Octopus was so all-consuming that it enveloped his physical life and his legacy as a writer. Sleuths across three decades have poured over the remnants of his manuscripts, voluminous notes and eclectic collection of documents. Few authors, who were unknown en vivo, have unfinished manuscripts which have sustained such public interest. Are the remnants of his notes worthy of editing into a Pulitzer Prize award winning book?