THERE is a word in Greek—meraki, (pronounced may-rah-key) that translates to “essence of yourself.” There is no English equivalent, but it means doing something with soul, creativity, or love; to put something of yourself into your work.
Over the past eight years or so, I’ve been obsessed with two questions. The first is: Why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized, as have the rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide.
ALTHOUGH I am never awake for them, I prefer sunrises to sunsets. Sunsets are an ending, and I love beginnings. Sunsets mean the end of another day, which means time away from all the things I love to do, at least until the next morning. I guess it’s a FOMO of sorts, a constant fear of missing out when my eyes are closed.
THERE IS a Japanese word, baka, that is used to describe the beauty of the changing seasons, especially the vibrant colours of autumn leaves. In theory, this word relays something beautiful, but when it appears to be occurring in the middle of August, perhaps decidedly less so. Yes, July was a washout (apparently the sixth wettest July on record), but August, well we had high hopes for August, which has continued to deliver more of the same.
THIS WEEKEND was all about the tennis: the Women's Final on Saturday (heartbreaking), and the Men's on Sunday (thrilling). Before all of that, on Friday, we made our way to Kensington to meet a old mate of P's from another lifetime.
In recent months, the signs and portents have been accumulating with increasing speed. Google is trying to kill the 10 blue links. Twitter is being abandoned to bots and blue ticks. There’s the junkification of Amazon and the enshittification of TikTok. Layoffs are gutting online media. A job posting looking for an “AI editor” expects “output of 200 to 250 articles per week.” ChatGPT is being used to generate whole spam sites.
Do you remember life before podcasts? Yes, obviously, is likely to be the short answer. Podcasting is still a relatively youthful medium, after all. In fact, it is exactly 20 years this month since the format’s invention: Open Source – a politics and culture discussion show hosted by the journalist Christopher Lydon – debuted in the summer of 2003, and is widely considered the first ever podcast. (Not that it was actually called podcasting at that point; the term was coined the following year by Ben Hammersley in an article for the Guardian.)
I AM WRITING to you from my brand new desk, which is actually an enormous solid oak dining table that arrived from Paris this morning. It is enormously heavy and makes a dramatic statement in the dining-area-turned-office and I’ve been googling how to make the back of a computer look nice (or at least tidy), as that’s what you see when you first enter the room, when your dining table is now your office.
THIS INSTALMENT of Style File features model Sara Ramén, who was born in Australia to a Swedish father and a French mother. She credits her heritage for her affinity with these cultures, despite growing up in Perth. Ramén began travelling on her own around the world as a model in her late-teens with Marilyn Agency and Storm Models, living many different places, including Paris, London and Sydney.
Well, that was fast. In November, the public was introduced to ChatGPT, and we began to imagine a world of abundance in which we all have a brilliant personal assistant, able to write everything from computer code to condolence cards for us. Then, in February, we learned that AI might soon want to kill us all.
IN GERMAN, the word lebensfreude refers to the joy of life, the love of living and enjoying life's pleasures, and the appreciation of the beauty of existence. An optimistic and positive term, the word reflects a happy and contented attitude towards life.
THIS MORNING, accidentally overwrote an entire website that had been working on for days, completely wiping out all of the content. I was distracted and had no business clicking around and hitting “okay” to big decisions while not fully focussed on what I was doing.
LA POSTA VECCHIA is a five-star luxury boutique hotel located in the coastal town of Ladispoli, about forty minutes outside of Rome on the historic Via Aurelia, a Roman road that was constructed in approximately 241 BC. House in a 17th-century villa and surrounded by 15 acres of Italianate gardens, the hotel overlooks the Tyrrenean sea and shares a coastline with villas and castles, small towns and beach clubs ...
TUCKED AWAY on the Côte d'Azur (the Mediterranean coast of southeastern France) lies Château Saint-Victor-la-Coste, one of the most idyllic places to while the hours. A vacation complex comprised of three cottages and one suite (in a 16th century castle), all available for rent, the Château is situated in the old village of St Victor la Coste (an equal distance between Avignon in Provence and the market town of Uzes in Languedoc) where you will find a boulangerie and épicerie
THERE ARE TIMES when you want a small quiet place for dinner that only you know, but then there are other times when you want a busy, trendy place, perhaps for a late lunch or an early dinner, to see and be seen. CoCo restaurant falls into the second category.
