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

The Big Bang Theory is getting another spin-off. Roll your eyes, but we’re giving this one a chance. It won’t focus on any of the main characters, thankfully. What more could we possibly learn about them? Instead the new show will focus on comic-book store owner Stuart Bloom, and Denise and Bert Kibbler. Colour us intrigued.

A Jaipur agency that provides domestic-help services has gone viral for the wrong reasons. It made a Reel about how you can escape the chores your mother assigns you, by hiring a maid. Where to start? Don’t call them maids. Do your own chores. Celebrating laziness is just tone-deaf. Bring back cancel culture.

Phi Filler’s milkshakes bring all the girls to the yard. Mostly because the Vietnamese model and fitness influencer prepares them shirtless. He gets sweaty, but isn’t cringe. He doesn’t finger dough, lick batter, or otherwise molest his ingredients. Instead, he whips up delicious, healthy meat-based recipes. Now that’s how to be sexy and cook up a storm.

We’ve all wondered how long we have. An AI-powered app, Death Clock, claims to put a number on it. Developer Brent Franson says it uses over 1,200 life-expectancy studies, and factors in diet, stress levels, sleep patterns and other data for its grim calculations. Users are treating it as a warning sign to live healthier. Doesn’t it feel like a morbid, self-fulfilling prophecy?

Forget the Work Wife and Work Husband nonsense. Let 2025 be the year of the Work Jester. They’re friends and colleagues who make us smile, who always have stories to tell. They’re the work bestie we can have a lunch with and laugh away stress. The ones that come out of long meetings with the funniest takeaways. Protect them at all costs.

In another episode of Scientists Discover the Obvious, researchers at the Technical University of Denmark have determined which types of paper are more likely to cause paper cuts. It all boils down to material, thinness, and physics. The worst offenders: Printer paper, and paper from most magazines. Is this why print is dying?

We’ve heard of finance bros, gym bros, and tech bros. Meet passport bro: He travels to poor countries, befriends locals, and films every cultural shock for content. No trip is complete without getting scammed at least once (and recapped in a separate video). There’s the mandatory upset stomach after trying local cuisine. Some passport bros secretly hope to fall for an exotic local beauty. Catch them at tourists traps this season. And tell Simon to go back.

The Indian Railways has admitted that it only washes those woollen blankets (the ones everybody uses) “once or twice a month”. Ugh! So much for romanticising rail travel. How is one supposed to wrap that blanket around them while they stare out the window, chai in hand, daydreaming now? We’d accepted that the toilets would never be clean. Why did they have to do us all so dirty?