You're in YOUR 40s!

Welcome to Quality Sheet #40.

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.

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There’s a Real Housewives quote for every occasion! Today, I’m celebrating 40 Quality Sheet issues with this slice of theatre from RHOA season 7, episode 10:

I appreciate you for reading!

Let’s dive in. This week’s newsletter explores posing in the nude and parents with a controversial mission for their brood.

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If you’re invested in the future of news, check out Newsreel, the “world’s first interactive news app designed to combat news avoidance and help young people engage with the news.” I’m excited about it. You can back the company through Kickstarter, here.

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“The smells we gravitate to can say just as much about us as our favorite music or how we like to be touched.” Why are we attracted to certain smells and turned off by others—and what does that say about us? Riley Black gives some pointers in Atmos.

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New York-based writer Indigo Goodson-Fields discovered birding after being laid off during the pandemic. She would calm her mind by taking daily trips to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where she could keep a close eye on nature, something she took a step further after she was gifted a pair of binoculars. Her love for observing birds helped her open up to other forms of love in her life, she says: “​​It made me realize that even when I am content, I should be available for love that I hadn’t yet experienced and that it could also bring me new joys.”

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How did Salt Lake City, “historically the headquarters of the Mormon Church, a group that eschews the consumption of alcohol,” become a haven for craft breweries? One factor is that fewer residents in the state are now Mormons, but that’s not the full story, Fifty Grande reports.

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“Does a naked body still hold any creative voltage?” Rachel Sherman asks in the New York Times. Here’s what her experience as a nude model revealed.

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The Handmaid’s Tale season 6 is streaming! In real life. The Guardian’s Jenny Kleeman visits America’s “premier pronatalists,” a couple whose controversial cause to have as many children as they can “to save humanity” is backed by billionaires including Elon Musk.

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Medusa may be best known for having snakes for hair, but now she’s been given a fresh voice. Nataly Gruender is one of several authors recasting Greek mythological women in new fictional and feminist ways, Alexandra Alter writes in the New York Times. It’s part of a recent wave of literary retellings “featuring women from Greek mythology who have often been overlooked, maligned or sidelined as pawns in male heroes’ journeys.”

Related: ^If you like that, you might love this Woman’s Hour episode about famous muses, like photographer Dora Maar, and the historic significance of their roles. The discussion also explores the muses’ own perspective of their creatively charged, and often turbulent, relationship with the artist.

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“At the core of Danish pastries, spices such as cinnamon and ingredients like pastry cream are signature components. Other notable ingredients…are butter, dough, almonds, a whipped cream or custard, and…a big spoonful of nostalgia.” Hungry yet? Pooja Shah peels back the crunchy layers to reveal what makes Danish pastries so delectable.

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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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