The Brunch round-up for August 16: The week and how it made us feel

DJ-musician Calvin Harris and his wife Vick Hope recently had a baby. Like any proud father, Harris put up a carousel of pics. One image is of Hope’s placenta. Wait, there’s more: Shots of the organ being dehydrated and turned into pills. It’s 2025. Now, baby pictures need a Trigger Warning too.

In 2013, James Howells’s girlfriend tossed his hard drive in the trash. Oops. It contained 8,000 Bitcoins. The couple split. Howell spent years trying to find his treasure (now worth $900 million) in the Newport City landfill. Last week, he finally gave up. See? THIS is why recycling matters.

Stay calm, romcom fans. Donald Petrie (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Miss Congeniality) is directing a new movie. The Last Resort is written by Karen McCullah (10 Things I Hate About You, She’s The Man, Legally Blonde). It stars Daisy Ridley, Alden Ehrenreich (No intros needed. They’re delicious). Be still, our beating Millennial hearts!

Denmark is giving citizens copyright over their own faces and voices, so they can’t be used in deep fakes. The law also prevents ‘realistic, digitally generated imitations’ of their features. One country is eager to protect its peoples’ identities. Another (ours) is all too eager to give up control.

Nine-Tailed Fox Demon Falls for Me, a Chinese drama, has more than 170 million views on Xiaohongshu, the local social media. It’s generated by AI and looks absolutely unhinged. There’s a labubu, a male fox who gives birth and hilarious scene jumps. We’re laughing now. Do we realise that the joke’s on us?

Denmark’s Aalborg Zoo wants people to donate their unwanted pet rabbits, chickens, guinea pigs and horses, so they can be fed to the wild animals at the zoo. On one level, it works. It simulates hunting in the wild, it’s better than abandoning pets. But is this how we really want our beloved companions to go? How about not keeping wild animals captive to begin with?

Two Zara ads have been banned in the UK for featuring excessively skinny models. Are we still on this issue? Earlier this year, an M&S campaign, and an ad from UK retailer Next were banned over displaying unhealthy bodies. Where’s the AI filter that has learnt to flag a dangerously skinny person in a photo? Wasn’t Zara mad excited about their AI tech last season?

Argentinian field hockey player Nicolás Keenan is in a relationship with Rob Jetten, who has served as Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands. They’ve been together since 2022 and got engaged in 2024. Yes, it’s giving Red, White & Royal Blue. Yes, we’re invested. Yes, more life imitating art like this, please.