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The guy who did my phone upgrade was very interested in why I had a parabola on my home screen.

Exemplary restaurant bathroom art at Recette.

I missed this news when it came out in February 2024. British company Tate & Lyle Sugars formerly had the oldest branding in existence, unchanged since 1885.

Their products’ biblically inspired logo depicted a dead lion swarmed with bees and the tagline, “Out of the strong came forth sweetness.” It alludes to the Old Testament story of Samson who killed a lion with his bare hands and later found a beehive inside the carcass, dripping with honey.

In 2024, Tate & Lyle Sugars updated the design with a far more anodyne image of a (seemingly alive) lion’s head with a single bee hidden in its mane. The quote was also removed.

“We’re confident that the fresh new design will make it easier for consumers to discover Lyle’s as an affordable, everyday treat while reestablishing the brand as the go-to syrup brand for the modern UK family,” said brand director James Whiteley.

“This man wasn’t in love with me. He wasn’t in love with anybody, it seemed. Though, in conversation, I would find out that the other women he saw wondered if that was a decision he made, rather than a feeling he didn’t have. His tendency was to lean toward the taken, and even when he saw women who were by any definition available, he preferred to speak about feeling second to their lives. One night at his house, he talked about how it felt to be so intimately involved with this collection of women who returned home to their husbands in the morning. In the moment, I listened and said I was sorry. Many months later, I wondered what it meant that he viewed us as a collection.”

—No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce, Haley Mlotek

I survived the first heatwave of summer 2025 without air conditioning by seeing the “Before” trilogy for three nights in a row at IFC Center. For dinner each night, I had a Butter burger followed by free gelato samples from Figo across the street.

“As it turned out, Carroll had been taking groups of strangers to Bergdorf for a couple months before she’d divulged her decades-old secret about Trump. She’d created a guided Me Too walking tour she’d been advertising on her Instagram, called “The Hideous Men Tour.” It took place on the first and third Sunday of each month, and like mobster tours, or Sex and the City tours, or those of hidden architectural gems, hers was built around landmarks: buildings where famous men had allegedly violated unfamous women. Matt Lauer, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, and Trump all made appearances. But Bergdorf was the meeting spot only; Carroll made no mention of its significance. At Trump Tower, Carroll listed off the women who at the time had accused the president of sexual misconduct. She was not included.

This was classic E. Jean: She is in part a performance artist, always lightly prodding. She loves a gimmick and a covert message; she’s game for a clever bit of mischief, and her idiosyncrasies are often revealed to have some careful rationale. But the tour also mimicked the way she had danced with her past since the assault: stepping close and remaining far, repulsed and magnetized — driven by what had happened, pulling away from it, and coming back.⁠⁠”

—E. Jean Carroll’s Uneasy Peace, NY Mag

“If that’s a weighted ellipsis I’d be curious to hear what’s loading it, however briefly”

— overheard on substack

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