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The Brunch round-up for August 1: The week and how it made us feel
This week, we’re mapping city cats, reading banned books, staying away from killer fashion and making up for The Odyssey
Multi masking. The Odyssey is long; mostly dudes doing dude things, while women weave, and fade into insignificance. So, what are women viewers doing through three hours of it? Skincare apparently. Nolan’s yarn is perfect for leaving on a barrier-cream mask, the dark multiplex is Vit-C-serum-friendly. You can’t carry food into a multiplex. But a little retinol in an amphora? No problem.
Riding through. Remember those trolley arguments in philosophy class? That hypothetical trolley that’s hurtling towards 20 people and will kill them, but if you pull a lever to swerve it to a side track, it only kills 10? It’s been all over our screens: The Good Place, the S1 finale of The Last of Us, the hilarious climax of Widow’s Bay, the Ru Paul disaster comedy Stop! That! Train!, and The Odyssey. The solutions vary, which is the point. But why is Hollywood suddenly obsessed?
Not so divine. The Percy Jackson S3 cast is on fire with their promos. Our fav bit is how each actor casually talks about the roles they auditioned for and didn’t get. Charlie Bushnell (who plays Luke, son of Hermes) got rejected for Stranger Things. Olive Abercrombie (Bianca, Hades’s daughter) missed out on playing Ruthye in Supergirl. Aryan Simhadri (the cute satyr Grover) almost was a superhero. Demigods? Nah. We’re all mere mortals.
Showing spine. “I am a bookstore employee” doesn’t sound like a slogan of dissent. But in Hong Kong, indie booksellers are being arrested for stocking books that the Chinese government deems seditious. After one person was arrested, wearing a T-shirt with the phrase, Taiwanese social media users made it a protest slogan. One of the banned books, Emily Feng’s Let Only Red Flowers Bloom, has gone viral. Add it to your TBR.
Saying pspspsps. Normal people live in Mumbai. Cat addicts live in Meowmbai. A new map of the city just dropped, listing locations where cattos hang out. IIT graduate Sudarshan Sudarshan built the platform so that you can visit your nearest local floof, and even report injured felines that need help. This is the best high-reward, low-effort date idea ever.
Tuning out. Being filmed by Meta’s pervert glasses? Instagram creators have found a loophole: Just sing or play a Disney song, and the company’s bots will flag the video for copyright infringement. Music has more protection than women, guys. We don’t want to be Part Of Your World. And we’re not going to Let It Go when it comes to random surveillance.
Adding sprinkles. Mark Kurlansky’s Salt: A World History is a 500-page book from 2002. We don’t know why, but it’s caught BookTok’s fancy. Everyone’s gushing over the trivia: WDYM Romans were paid in salt? Or that salary, soldier, salami and salacious all derive from salt? It’s a well-deserved revival. This is how food writing should be. Stop fawning over new menus and chefs.
Fashion victims. US brand Madewell recalled 6,000 sweaters because they caught fire easily. Zara’s viral wide-legged trousers have earned the nickname Death Pants after several wearers tripped, fell and documented the bruisy aftermath online. We expected fast fashion to kill the planet, now it’s maiming us too. We lowkey miss skinny jeans.
From HT Brunch, August 1, 2026
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