scrapping Michelin guides + parenting while high

you're in for a wild ride

and

Feb 04, 2025

Beyonce finally won album of the year. Sabrina Carpenter’s stage presence is insane considering she is so smol. Chappell Roan criticised the head hunchos of the music industry while accepting her first major award from them. The future of the entertainment world – and all its award shows – looks to be bright.

Of course, we’re not only talking about the Grammy’s in this week’s edition of the newsletter. What do you take me for?!

We’ve got the scoop on the Michelin Guide’s fight to stay relevant, parents who still take recreational drugs, how ADHD impacts life expectancy, and how Spotify changed the music industry in unexpected ways.

Let’s dive in.

🏆 Culture

Beyonce was always too black for the Grammys – rolling stone
This year’s Grammys has been called the ‘best in years’ and one that’s ushered in a new generation of musical talent. Perhaps Beyoncé finally scooping up the Album of the Year award – the one she’s been after all along – feels like the turning of a page. A full circle moment, if you will. The Grammys is notorious for being an institution dominated by white traditionalism, and as Rolling Stone writer Mankaprr Coneth points out, Beyoncé was only given the top prize once she spoke to the academy in a language it could understand. “Country music has Black roots but a white face, and by taking it head on, the Recording Academy finally saw themselves in her,” writes Coneth. Congrats, Bey.

Michelin Guide competes with influencers to be top tastemaker – the times
Has the Michelin Restaurant Guide lost its credibility? Well, not really, but it has had to rapidly adapt to a world where recommendations from food influencers and travel content creators are now king. In *this economy* people are more interested in getting delicious food on a dime rather than blowing a bag at fine dining restaurants. This new foodie culture has driven the Michelin Guide to drop its stuffy demeanour to become more inclusive of different types of foods (say bye to exclusively haute cuisine spots) and to drop the focus from how (and where) dishes are presented… and instead to draw attention solely to how they taste. Who would’ve thought?!

🍄 Society

‘Everybody does it’: the trippy rise of parenting while high – business insider
While the contents of this story admittedly sounds like serious white people activities, I had to highlight it anyway. I mean who would think Business Insider would be normalising white-collar parents tripping balls on the regular? New research shows a growing number of parents are getting high to ‘stay sane’ amid the insane demands of parenthood. By continuing to recreationally use weed, mushrooms, LSD, cocaine, and MDMA (when babysitters have been organised, obviously) they're hoping to send their kids a better message than "just say no" in the future. Many hope to show their kids how to safely experiment with drugs if/when the time comes, including the amounts they ingests and where they source their product.

Are we steamrolling towards the apocalypse? – huck mag
Yes, things feel bad. But trust me (or rather, Emma Garland from huck), they always have. The Doomsday Clock just edged one second closer to midnight, which may or may trigger a deep feeling of dread within your soul. But when we’re so overloaded with horrible news thanks to the 24 hour news cycle, could you blame anyone if it didn’t? “Simply put: it’s hard to get an accurate read on how bad things actually are while being told they are really bad all the time,” writes Garland. This article explores how the media has always fixated on the negative… and how we can all resist the slippery slope into hysteria.

❤️‍🩹 Health

ADHD’s sobering life expectancy numbers – the atlantic
You’d have to be living under a rock to not know that ADHD diagnoses have been on the rise and that such prevalence has been commonly met with dismissiveness. But perhaps we need to frame our attitudes on this condition for which there is no cure. Though ADHD doesn’t shorten l, its symptoms (concentration issues, emotional instability, memory issues, and impulsivity) impact nearly every aspect of life. People with ADHD are more likely to engage in risky behaviours and report higher risk of depression and anxiety – all of which can chip away at a person’s quality of life throughout adulthood. Getting an early diagnosis can help ease symptoms, first, we need to form a new perspective that abandons the idea that this is a disorder that affects kids, teens, or one that can be outgrown.

Lung cancer diagnoses on the rise among never-smokers worldwide – the guardian
Think lung cancer is only for those who smoke a pack of cigarettes a day? That’s simply not the case anymore. The proportion of people being diagnosed with lung cancer who have never smoked is increasing, and the World Health Organisation says air pollution is a key factor. Yep, we’ve basically regressed back to industrial times. In fact, non-smoking related lung cancer is now estimated to be the fifth highest cause of cancer deaths globally with 2.5 million people diagnosed with the disease in 2022. This figure could rise due to increased exposure to polluted air, particularly air with particulate matter (PM2.5), from sources like vehicle exhaust, industrial emissions, and wildfires. Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ doesn’t sound so ridiculous now, does it?

🤳 Tech

‘What I Eat in a Day’ videos are entirely unappetizing – thred.
While it’s great to see young people leaning into healthier lifestyles, there “has to be some kind of limit to the amount of wholefoods and adaptogenic powders we can scarf down on a weekly basis,” as Thred writer Flo Bellinger puts it. Social media is known for only showing a highlight reel of our lives, which – in the case of What I Eat in a Day videos – means deliberately excluding processed foods and sweet treats from the viewfinder. “This perpetuates a cycle of shame on those who eat in a (let’s face it) entirely normal manner,” Bellinger continues. When we hold a magnifying glass up to our eating habits and showcase them to the entire world, we risk losing the joy of an everyday essential.

Spotify’s playlists have altered the music industry in unexpected ways – the economist
The popularity of AI-generated ‘mood playlists’ exemplifies how a decent portion of Spotify’s 640 million active users are more than happy for the app’s algorithms to choose what they listen to. These playlists mash up music from different eras and places, ‘smoothing away connection, context, and novelty’. By boosting popular artists and songs, new artists find it a struggle to gain exposure and rack up streams – one study found that nearly three-quarters of streamed songs on Spotify are over 18 months old. Choosy music lovers will still dig deeper to find new artists, discover niche songs from the past, and explore genres that aren’t included in the mainstream. Still, most will not. With AI-generated playlists unlikely to disappear, we could all soon be listening to the same 50 tunes in a number of years. How boring is that? And wasn’t Spotify’s original goal to improve discoverability for its users?

Recommendation

I love this video. An iconic video for an iconic song? I don’t need to say anything else.

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Until next time,