The Brunch round-up for November 1: The week and how it made us feel

As if Dua Lipa and Callum Turner weren’t adorable enough already, they’ve now revealed how they met: “We sat next to each other and realised we were reading the same book (Hernán Díaz’s Trust).” They’d both just finished the first chapter and were literally on the same page. Okay universe, our turn.

Lily Allen’s new album, West End Girl, proves that break-up albums go the hardest. It details the gory bits of her open marriage and her manipulative, cheating husband (Stranger Things’s dad, David Harbour) who’s apparently a sex addict. Can’t wait for the show’s press tour that’s around the corner. Awkward!

There’s a new dating term on TikTok: Swag Gap. It’s when one partner is clearly more stylish or cooler than the other. It’s what Boomers would call a Reacher-Settler Romance (in which one partner was settling for someone socially beneath them). We can smell the fights coming. Imagine telling someone, “It’s not you, it’s your drip.” Or worse, being designated as the partner lacking in swag.

Mumbai’s trains are little horror shows by themselves. Now, game developer Dwarven Brothers has literally set a scary game on a local train. It’s eerily empty, the lights flicker, the graffiti is bloody. That’s just the 11.15 pm Churchgate-Borivali Fast, y’all. As long as we don’t have to fight anyone for a seat, we‘re fine with ghosts for company.

Daniella Monet, who played the annoying, iconic, elder Vega sister in the Nickelodeon sitcom Victorious, has confirmed that a spinoff is coming. Trina Vega returns to Hollywood Arts as a substitute teacher, presiding over the shenanigans of a new batch of performers. Give us banger songs, please, maybe an Ariana cameo? Just no feet jokes and no Dan Schneider.

Japanese company YKK, which makes most of the zippers we use, is updating its design. Zippers haven’t changed in more than 100 years. Now, they will sink seamlessly into clothes, without support fabric. Very good, YKK-san. Please redo the ballpoint pen next. How about one that doesn’t gunk up every two sentences?

OK, no one works a 9-to-5 job anymore these days; we’re all working much longer. But a sadistic new slot has entered the game: 9-9-6, basically 9am to 9pm, six days a week. Ugh. Narayana Murthy must be ecstatic. Us? We’re waiting for the apocalypse so we can sync it to our Google calendar.

When Amazon’s cloud went down last week, most of us slept through it, except the users of the Eight Sleep beds. The WiFi-enabled temperature controls went rogue, leaving some users roasting, others freezing, and some stuck in the wrong position. Look, we’ve all prayed for more action in bed. This is SO not what we meant.