The Brunch round-up for October 18: The week and how it made us feel

Trying Billie Eilish’s UNO, steering clear of stay-at-home-sons, gaslighting like Ron Weasley, and asking robots to act right

The Brunch round-up for October 18: The week and how it made us feel

• 
  On shuffle

  Another week, another special-edition Uno add-on deck. This one has been curated by Billie Eilish, with pretty colours and new rules. In Reveal Hands, everyone plays with their cards face up. Go on, look your bua in the eye as you annihilate her with your last Draw Four. Family reunions weren’t chaotic enough already, were they?
• 
  Looking for a paranoid android

  An immersive exhibition of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy hits London soon. “This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move”. Fans fear that it will have the same bro energy as the film adaptation. Instead give us the book’s OG fever-dream weirdness. Give us Zaphod with his two heads and three arms. Resistance is useless.
• 
  Beta testing

  Tradwives? So last season. The internet’s new toy is stay-at-home sons. They’re jobless, live with their parents and “pitch in” with domestic chores. Obv, they’re conservative. It’s a boy-mom’s dream come true. And a win for women – the red flag flies so high, no woman will swipe right.
• 
  In the Upside Down

  Yeah yeah, dating is a minefield. News is, we’ve been doing it all wrong. To score a good match, you apparently have to feed the algorithm the opposite of your actual preferences. Hot for sporty peeps? Play up how attractive you find nerds. Into books? Tell the algo that you prefer AI summaries instead. Sigh. ATP, our mums and dads might as well pick partners for us.
• 
  Teaming up

  Pick your fighter: Rosé x Bruno Mars, Jennie x Doechii, Lisa x Tyla, Jisoo x Zayn Malik. The Blackpink girls have been dropping banger collabs. Jisoo and Zayn’s Eyes Closed MV released this week, completing the square. Fans are going nuts, arguing about which collab is cooler (#iykyk). Chill. There are enough finger hearts for everyone.
• 
  Feeling gaslit

  A clip of some dude, who looks suspiciously like Ron Weasley, shouting “Expensive Petroleum!” while filling up his tank at a gas station, is going viral. No, that’s not Rupert Grint making the best pun ever. It’s just a muggle with great comic timing. Even magic can’t save us from inflation.
• 
  Struggling to blink

  You thought Brat summer was over? We’re raging into 2026, judging by the strobe-light-soaked trailer for Charli XCX’s new film The Moment. The film radiates 10,000 aura points (with Alexander Skarsgård, Kylie Jenner, Rachel Sennott, and what seems like every cool actor). It’s the final boss of ensembles. It’s giving “you can’t sit with us” energy, but bathed in neon green.
• 
  Still waiting

  Finally, a robot that we actually need. The five-foot-six humanoid, Figure 03, promises to clean your house, fold your laundry, and do the dishes. So far though, it’s a little slow, drops things often, and freezes when it panics. Seems like a nepo hire. Honestly, we don’t need robots to replace us. We just need them to keep up.