Hello and welcome to the weekend – I hope it was a good week.
I’m back with our usual mix of good things to read from around the Guardian. If you’re after something longer, pick up a title from our readers’ list of ultimate summer books. Or try Japanese author Mieko Kawakami’s comfort read … Kafka. If you find books about interminable corridors and giant insects stressful (weird of you), you can just use them as decorations! But speaking of interior design …
1. Cafes: why do they all look like this?
Barista existentialism comes for us all. This particular question has been on people’s minds for a while, at least since Broadsheet went meta in 2015 and pondered its own impact on the Melbourne design landscape. The year after, New York writer Kyle Chayka coined the term “AirSpace” for that feeling of sameness in so many contemporary spots – from workplaces to Airbnbs, and especially, cafes and restaurants.
His theory then: businesses trying to woo crowds “moulded by the internet” inevitably copied styles that worked – and lo, “the cycle of aesthetic optimisation and homogenisation continued”.
His theory now: the trappings (white tiles, millennial pink, added or subtracted potted plants) might change; what stays the same is the sameness itself. Grim – but with a ring of truth; think about the last place you ordered coffee. And read more about it in this excerpt of Chayka’s new book.
How long will it take to read: a bit less than 10 minutes
2. ‘He chose to be kind’
I’ve shared Ranjana Srivastava’s column here before, but this on Wednesday nearly made me cry. The author and oncologist this week described a transformative act of kindness from her own doctor.
When she lost a previously healthy midterm twin pregnancy, Srivastava found herself “stranded” in grief. “More used to giving care than receiving, I turned against myself,” she writes. For weeks, she pushed down the tears, the instinct to mourn – telling herself her situation wasn’t so bad, relatively speaking. And one afternoon, a letter from her doctor arrived.
Dear Ranjana,
I trust you are coping OK after the very sad events of recent weeks.
It’s so hard sometimes, when someone around you goes through something awful, to know what to say.
Here’s one idea (straight from that simple, beautiful letter): “It must have been so hard.”
How long will it take to read: two-and-a-half minutes
3. A refugee camp in Beirut
In the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, there are no fences or checkpoints to stop people coming or going. But as Ghaith Abdul-Ahad finds, “a mix of draconian laws, discrimination and prejudice has ensured that it feels as claustrophobic as any camp enclosed by high concrete walls”.
He speaks to residents for a deft and urgent portrait of this “temporary” city inside a city – there since a group Palestinian refugees pitched camp “on a piece of wasteland” 70 years ago. It is now a cramped and dangerous home to somewhere between 14,000 and 40,000 people. And could, as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continues, become home to many more.
***
“What is happening now in the camp is worse than any war. Young men are dying from drugs. A whole generation is wasting their lives.” – a friend of the youngest son of Suhaila, one of the women interviewed here
How long will it take to read: at least 15 minutes
Further reading: you can find our full coverage of the crisis in Gaza here.
4. Ritual humiliation as therapy
Social humiliation as medicine … it’s an idea, I guess. One that Joe Stone decided to try out, committing (with the vaguely sadistic backing of his therapist) to “placing himself in the path of rejection” every day for a month.
The idea: that getting rejected can help you get over your fear of rejection – came from a card game, and then took off on TikTok.
Sounds horrible. Well, kind of. And honestly Stone’s 30-day diary doesn’t make me desperate to run out and try it. But he does include some slightly more “try-this-at-home” advice there too.
How long will it take to read: six or so minutes
5. Maybe it’s time to be nicer to yourself
So, as Elle Hunt notes, most people give resolutions up by mid-January. But is that so bad? Why all the perfectionism? For all the self-awareness about the dangers of too much self-improvement, we do seem to talk about it a lot.
“If anything, the discourse can make me feel mutinous,” Hunt writes, “like I want to eat, drink and vape myself silly in a stand against [it all].” This is highly relatable, but as she acknowledges, doesn’t get rid of that nagging feeling there are some vices you really should quit.
A different approach: “Instead of giving up our pleasures, we might aim to bring more and different ones in – to reconcile our real and ideal selves, or at least bring them closer together.”
How long will it take to read: three-and-a-half minutes, maybe four
That’s me for now – go and have a little treat.
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