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.
Four years ago this week, we were speeding through Tesco while heaping family value packs of toilet paper onto shopping trollies, as if doing so were a challenge on Supermarket Sweep. (I say we to avoid singling out the yous that stockpiled Andrex. No shame here! Fear can make us do nonsensical things. But I do feel the need to clarify that I did not panic-buy Andrex. Store-brand tissue works just fine.) What a time. Those helpless rolls of emotional support 3-ply never asked to fall victim to our mass panic!Â
So itâs no surprise that the toilet paper should strike back. Last Monday, cases of loo roll spilled out onto a Los Angeles highway from the back of a truck, causing traffic jams and closing âmultiple lanes.â Coincidence? I think not. What if this isnât an isolated incident? What if millions of rolls of toilet paper have been colluding, like the orcas, to exact revenge upon us?
Anyway, welcome to Quality Sheet. This weekâs assortment will take you out of this world in a few different ways. Grab a snack and dive in.
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âAll I knew was that I didnât feel things the way other kids did. I didnât feel guilt when I lied. I didnât feel compassion when classmates got hurt on the playground. For the most part, I felt nothing, and I didnât like the way that ânothingâ felt.â Writer Patric Gagne reveals how living with sociopathy affected her while growing upâand the habits she developed as a child to fill the void she felt in place of empathy for others. She says: âSociopaths arenât âbadâ or âevilâ or âcrazy.â We simply have a harder time with feelings.â
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How does a fraudster and his mates end up squatting in a Beverly Hills mansion for five months? The ruse involves a private investigator, Burning Man-esque parties, some pearl clutching and a whole lot of grift. The story from Curbedâs Bridget Read is one you donât want to miss! Plus, it contains this golden line (about one of the mansionâs inhabitants): âIn 2016, he tried to crowdfund the invention of a sneaker you could tie with a mobile app named for Nikola Tesla.âÂ
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âCases [of incest] show up in every part of society, every strata of income,â genetic genealogist CeCe Moore tells the Atlanticâs Sarah Zhang, who reports DNA tests like 23andMe are increasingly revealing cases of relations between close family members. An estimate suggests one in 7,000 people in the U.K. is âborn to parents who were first-degree relatives.â
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Built-up cities like London face unique effects of climate change as widely used materials like concrete absorb heat. Here are the cityâs neighbourhoods most susceptible to heatwaves.
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Must-see: Tate Britainâs âWomen in Revoltâ exhibition explores various forms of protest women in Britain exercised from 1970 to 1990. What struck me about the installation is how pertinent concerns within that periodâprohibitive childcare availability and costs, the toll of unequal domestic labour, abortion rights, racism in healthcare and homophobiaâremain today.
Related: Why are we recycling debates about feminism we hashed out 10 years ago? Sarah Manavis asks why discussions about womenâs rights that became mainstream in the 2010s are being repackaged as new, and warns superficiality is something we canât afford as rights are being actively rolled back.
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âAfrofuturism is a way of thinking about the future, with alternate realities based on perspectives of the African diaspora. It integrates imagination, liberation, technology and mysticism. Imagination is important because it is liberating.â Afrofuturist writer and filmmaker Ytasha Womack talks to the New York Timesâ Katrina Miller about âNiyah and the Multiverse,â a new show at Chicagoâs Adler Planetarium that blends physics with aspects of Black culture in the U.S. The show sees protagonist Niyah âlearning about the multiverse and also exploring her own identity through her ancestral heritage.â
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Whatâs a ritual you practice that you wouldnât be the same without? Photographer Keerthana Kunnath captures the roles of memory, faith and small daily acts in forming who we are, through the lens of her own memories growing up in Calicut, India.
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Itâs not Joel Osteenâs Lakewood; itâs not Hillsong, no. Americaâs largest megachurch church is the life-saving, reality altering Church of Ambrosia, which my Forbes colleague Will Yakowicz reports was âfounded on the belief that cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms are sacraments that can be used as spiritual tools.â
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An exhibition at the New-York Historical Society looks at the height of New Amsterdam in 1660, the Dutch settlement preceding English control (that later renamed the colony New York). Crucially, the installation includes the perspective of descendants of Native American inhabitants of Manhattan dispossessed of the land by the Dutch. On until July 14.
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Lastly, take a look at what astronomers call a âcosmic corpseâ. The Vela supernova is the result of a star that exploded 11,000 years ago and measures âalmost 100 light-years across with a diameter twenty times that of a full moon,â Colossal reports.
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Thank you for reading. Share to sweeten someoneâs dayâand have a lovely rest of your week!
Isabel :)
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You always have the best pieces. Thanks for sharing, Isabel!