Pickin' up good vibrations
And buckiin' to sweet sensations.
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.
I’ve been making funny faces since last Friday. In public, in private, at my desk, in my living room and on the train. Also, my body has been contorting itself involuntarily ever since that day. The affliction? Cowboy Carter-itis. I can’t stop listening to this masterpiece! Send help.
Anywho, welcome to Quality Sheet. This week’s newsletter features preserved brains, Parisian penthouses and a pig mascot named after Ozempic. Let’s gallop in.
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Parts of the U.S. are bracing for a cicada infestation—but that’s probably the least worry. Why? Apparently, the insects drink so much that they are “the strongest urinators in the animal kingdom with flows that put humans and elephants to shame,” the Associated Press’ Seth Borenstein reports. That’s NOT even the weirdest part of the story.
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Here’s why a swine mascot affectionately named “Ozempig” sparked backlash—and triggered a headache for the comms team of a minor league baseball team in Minnesota.
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Singer Lola Young will drop the full version of her song “Big Brown Eyes” this Friday, which I am pleased about because I have replayed this tease of the song 23 times a day over the past week (in addition to Beyoncé). I can’t wait to blast the full song all summer.
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“These guys are motherfuckers. I’ll beat the shit out of you, piece of shit motherfucker. I’ll kill you!” These are not the words of a mobster or a loan shark. This is the threat of a furious ticket seller working for a New York City sightseeing bus company to a rival vendor, during a bust-up in midtown Manhattan in 2018. As dramatic as the skirmish sounds, it represents an ongoing feud between tourist bus companies vying for business “from the same pool” of customers in the city, Curbed’s Jess McAllen reports.
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New members-only clubs have been sprouting up across New York City post-lockdown, thanks to plenty of empty office space and demand for third places (if you can afford the price of admission). As pricey as they are, many do pay: one survey found “over 60 percent of clubs reported an increase in membership for 2022.” The New York Times Anna Kodé lets us behind the velvet rope into the past and present of the city’s exclusive hubs.
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Take a peek into Karl Lagerfeld’s homes in France, courtesy of Marie Kalt, former editor-in-chief of the French edition of Architectural Digest. She’s co-written a book about the late fashion designer’s properties and shares her insight with Interview Magazine’s Lily Kwak. “For Lagerfeld, home was a reflection of one’s being. His own properties were extensions of his guarded inner-self,” Kwak says.
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Killer whales would like you to know they’re not all created the same, ok? Researcher John Ford discovered a different species of the mammal around 40 years ago off Vancouver Island, which scientists are just now starting to acknowledge as separate from the “resident” killer whales known to inhabit those waters. I already love them because these whales—with their “tonal, more alien” calls—were previously considered by scientists to be “oddballs” as “they appeared…to be social outcasts who had left or been driven out of the resident group,” Craig Welch writes in The Atlantic.
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Alexandra Morton-Hayward is an “undertaker-turned-paleobiologist” digging up the mystery behind why some brains remain intact after death. She is part of a team at Oxford building on research into more than 4,000 brains “recovered since the 17th century,” Olivia Young reports in Atlas Obscura.
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"The industry has kind of made black women feel like there isn't a place for them in the comedy circuit," comedian Kyrah Gray tells BBC 1Xtra, which last month hosted it’s first comedy gala “celebrating voices underrepresented in the industry.” Meet some of the up-and-coming stars of British comedy here.
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“Danza de las Voladores” (dance of the flyers) has historically been a male ritual in Cuetzalan del Progreso, Mexico. The practice, which began centuries ago “as a way to encourage a good harvest,” is increasingly being taken up by women “in defiance of traditional gender roles.” Photographer Valeria Luongo documents the dance in her captivating photo series “When Women Fly.”
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Thank you for reading. Share to sweeten someone’s day—and have a lovely rest of your week!
Isabel :)
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