HDQ: Welcome Great Pumpkin (Spice)

Plus: JoBro Purity Rings, Bama Rush, Grimes, Wholesome Romance, and Jay-Z Library Cards 🎃💍🪐💘📚

Aug 23, 2023

Welcome to your mid-week quickie! This is your bonus, even-less-strings-attached newsletter to get you through the week.

What’s On My Mind…

I’m writing this in a cardigan, my TikTok is full of Halloween decor, and rumour has it the Pumpkin Spice Latte launches this week.

August really slipped away (like a bottle of wine).

Weekly Reads

A Self-Care Guide For Teachers (From a Teacher)🍎

An essential read for everyone, educator or not.

What matters most is you. Your well-being is the source from which everything else flows…But before I give you advice on the parts you can control, let me name the systemic issue outside of your control. You work in an inequitable system that profits off of your martyrdom.

The Alarming Rise of Wholesome Romance 💘

Romance novels are sweeter than ever, and that’s a red flag.

The multiplatform romance (and adjacent) juggernauts of the recent past, from Twilight and The Fault in Our Stars to Fifty Shades of Grey, seduced fans with bloodsucking dreamboats, BDSM billionaires, and terminally ill teens. Now, when we immerse ourselves in a love story, fewer of us seem to seek that frisson of danger. What has become more exotic, and thus more desirable, is comfort, safety, stability.

Grimes on Living Forever, Dying on Mars, and Giving Elon Musk Ideas for His Best (Worst) Tweets 🪐

Because of this interview, I will forever identify as a “boutique analogue artist.”

I think if I died on Earth, in my last moments I would regret it. If I died in space, I would be like, “You’ve lived a great life, you did all the things you wanted to do.”

Bama Rush TikTok Is Getting More Relatable 🏫

Even though Bama Rush is over (and even though Bama Morgon got dropped), this article is worth the read.

Cadenhead says she wants to start a new trend: relatable rush. “Let me show you my rush bag,” she says, referencing the videos other creators make detailing what they stock their often hundred-dollar bags with (among the products sometimes included are designer lipsticks, mini fans, and pocket-sized straighteners for emergency hair touch-ups). Cadenhead's contains a singular Tide Pen (“and dirt,” she says, “to keep the Tide pen company”).