WE ARE FINALLY back with the fifth instalment of our popular series, Talking Points, after a very long hiatus, and this week, we’re looking at the concepts of core values, false ideals, and hyperreality.
America’s independent bookstores may look like the tattered, provincial shops of a bygone era—holding onto their existence by the slimmest thread. And booksellers may appear genial and absent-minded, like characters out of Dickens. But in reality, they’re the marketing geniuses of our time.
WE HAVE BEEN watching the tennis. Normally don't join in until the end of the second week, but we wanted to see the Andy Murray/Tsitsipas match, which began on Thursday night, and continued the next day. Since we were in town on Friday, we had to keep checking in on our phones to see how things were going, in between pub visits in Belgravia and drinks on hot terraces of quaint new-to-us pubs...
WE’VE BEEN DOING quite a bit of décor research lately, looking for storage solutions (double wardrobes, bookcases, consoles⏤that sort of thing) and came across YouTuber Katja Nordkvist‘s serene home in Denmark.
When we talk about artificial intelligence, we rely on metaphor, as we always do when dealing with something new and unfamiliar. Metaphors are, by their nature, imperfect, but we still need to choose them carefully, because bad ones can lead us astray. For example, it’s become very common to compare powerful A.I.s to genies in fairy tales.
IN THE NEW living room, there is a marble fireplace with a large mantel that we're still trying to figure how to decorate. Currently, there is a large pelargonium in a terracotta pot on the lefthand side, as well as a tiny cutting from a larger epipremnum pictum argyraeus in a pot next to it.
I’VE GONE back and forth between English countryside style and minimalist neutrals lately, and after a quick fling with the former again, I’m firmly back to the latter, having discovered this ultra-chic home, known as Herenhuis in ‘t Gooi (Mansion in the Gooi) on Instagram. If you’re not familiar with neighbourhoods in the Netherlands, the Gooi is an area around Hilversum, in the centre of the country. It is a slightly hilly area characterised by green landscapes, historical charm, villas, and is also known as home to the rich and famous.
FOR SOME strange reason, springtime always makes me feel like completely renovating the powder rooms. What seems to be fine in the winter, suddenly feels oppressive and in dire need of a makeover when the days get longer and the sun fills everything with its warm golden light. Can't wait until it's warm enough to throw open all the windows again and let the fresh air in, fluttering the gauzy curtains in the bathrooms here at the cottage.
When OpenAI launched ChatGPT, with zero fanfare, in late November 2022, the San Francisco–based artificial-intelligence company had few expectations. Certainly, nobody inside OpenAI was prepared for a viral mega-hit. The firm has been scrambling to catch up—and capitalize on its success—ever since.
THE RARE BEAUTY Blush. A Stanley Travel Tumbler. Olaplex shampoo. The Diesel Belt Skirt. Dior Lip Oil. L’Oreal Telescopic Lift Mascara. Any of the Skims Sets. While this might seem like a nonsensical list of products, on TikTok, each of these items has been the focus of a viral spending frenzy. Once known for dance videos, TikTok’s growing user rate has promoted the app from social media site to thriving marketplace — where a product can go from new offering to cult favorite in days, and drive thousands of dollars in sales.
A gallery wall is a collection of artwork or photographs displayed together on a wall in a cohesive manner, often arranged in a grid or other pattern. Gallery walls can be used to display a variety of items, such as family photos, paintings, prints, or other types of art. They can be used to create a focal point in a room, or to add visual interest to a space.
THREE YEARS ago, we featured the country home of photographer Laura Muthesius and stylist Nora Eisermann, both from the blog, Our Food Stories. It was a cosy mid-century kitchen that overlooked the ocean in the Skåne area of the Swedish countryside. This home is a former schoolhouse located in a village north-east of Berlin that has been in Laura's family since she was a child.
Communities can be amazingly resilient after traumas. Londoners banded together during the German Blitz bombings of World War II, and rebuilt the city afterward. When I visited the Thai island of Phuket six months after the 2004 tsunami killed thousands in the region and displaced even more, I found a miraculous recovery in progress, and in many places, little remaining evidence of the tragedy. It was inspirational.
In any given year, the exercise of assembling a definitive list of the best places to travel is both exciting and daunting. After all, we’re never short on inspiring places and experiences we hope to cross off. And so, every fall, when we convene to start the process of creating this list, we do so with great care, enlisting our extensively traveled network of writers from around the world—and for the first time this year, editors from other Condé Nast Traveler markets—to pitch, endorse, defend, and eventually align on the places we believe that you, as our readers, will most want to travel to over the next 12 months.
THIS WEEKEND was a working one, as we have the first part of a brand collaboration due in the next few days and the second due at the beginning of next week. There has been creative direction and storyboarding, photoshoots, styling and editing.
