A butterfly on my shoulder

Airing grievances about the loss of peak celebrityhood (imho).

Welcome to Quality Sheet, a weekly assortment of outside-the-box news, events, trends and offbeat oddities to indulge your curiosity. Subscribe for a midweek treat each Wednesday that'll make you hummm with intrigue and amusement.

---

We’ve had few good summers since celebrities stopped launching clothing lines they claim to have been “very hands on” in creating. What happened to the golden era of QVC collections of the 2010s? I miss the days when a Real Housewife would host a launch party, complete with branded step-and-repeat, for their line of capiz shell anklets. Or their range of fringed acrylic ponchos you could take “from day to night.” We all know they only turned up to the final meeting before designs were sent to the manufacturer. And good for them! It was all so wholesome when that was the extent of disinformation we had to deal with.

Anywho, welcome to Quality Sheet! This week’s newsy jaunt is making stops at Mean Girls, marathons and members-only clubs.

🍬

On Wednesdays, we read deep dives into the people who inspired “Mean Girls.” The Washingtonian’s Sylvie McNamara speaks to some of the women, now in their late thirties, who have been harbouring secrets about their connection to the original film and how their school days inspired parts of it. You’ll enjoy if you grew up watching Laguna Beach, The Hills and similar oeuvres.

🍯

ElevenLabs’ AI voice dubbing tool is beating out its rivals by producing eerily lifelike copies of users’ voices. The billion-dollar company began when its founders were tired of hearing robotic voices dubbed over foreign films. Now, the technology could find applications in industries like healthcare and entertainment. Predictably, some groups have already adopted the tool to nefarious ends, the Atlantic’s Damon Beres reports.

🍫

“Clothes are repositories of emotions, memories and stories, and simply seeing them can take us sliding down the wormhole to the past,” writes the New York Times’ Vanessa Friedman, who helps a reader decide whether she should clear out her wardrobe after a divorce.

🍪

Meet Helen Ryvar, a Welsh woman and mum of three who runs half a marathon every day. Her goal is to run 1,000 of them consecutively, which she’ll accomplish by January.

🥠

Beautiful sentences abound in Emily Sundberg’s (

Feed Me

) behind-the-velvet-curtain report on the explosion of members-only clubs in New York. Like these: “It was easy, in the throes of COVID, to imagine that the absolute last thing that would ever return to New York City was a club where people would congregate to work. And yet here I am, by my new money fireplace.”

🍩

How many cheek kisses are too many? To hug or to simply shake hands? These are basic questions a human might wonder when greeting someone. It turns out elephants also face this conundrum when meeting one another, based on how close they are. From flashing their bums to flapping their ears, discover some of the signals they use to say hello, according to a study of elephants in Zimbabwe.

🍭

If you want help retaining what you’ve just read, here are 7 tips from neurologist Dr. Richard Restak on keeping your memory as sharp as possible.

🎁

Thank you for reading. Share to sweeten someone’s day—and have a lovely rest of your week!

Isabel :)

Get in touch/share links/follow me: