Hi sweeties! I hope your Wednesday is so far uneventful, and that you’ve started dreaming of the adventures you’ll embark on this weekend. I have a bat mitzvah on Saturday and a one-year-old’s birthday on Sunday, so if those of you with children can advise me on gift etiquette for both, I’d be much obliged. Cuz you know I’m THISCLOSE to being Crazy Aunt Amy who brings a book on totalitarianism and a spider plant. For the one-year-old.

• Hey, so you remember that anonymous NYT op-ed by a Trump staffer describing how ineffably screwed we all are? Well, that individual will be releasing a book entitled “A Warning” in November, and once again I mention the possibility of a commune in the woods in a Missive, I really should start keeping a tally.

• As y’all know, The Goods by Vox is one of my favorite sections of journalist nerdery, and this story does not disappoint: Pumpkin spice has taken over Trader Joe’s. Here’s why. Also, before you scoff too hard, a reminder from an excellent 2014 BuzzFeed article: “To make fun of the basic, then, is another way of displacing concern over the increasing difficulty to do so, to cloak concern over the flattening of American consumer and mediated culture in the form of a meme.” Also: “Unique taste — and the capacity to avoid the basic — is a privilege.” So do chug those PSLs if you so fancy, folks.

• In a bid to survive, WeWork is taking a $6.5 billion bailout from SoftBank group, which could reap former CEO Adam Neumann upwards of $1.2 billion for his controlling shares so he’ll GTFO, a “platinum parachute” to fund the company to start laying staffers off. Just, wow. As I mentioned on Twitter, I really need to learn to fail up.

• In similar news, Self-aware billionaires are my favorite billionaires: “You’re not victims, you’re the richest people in the world… How in God’s name do you feel like a victim?”

• And finally (takes notes)
  

  

What a time to be alive! Be kind to each other.
xoxo Amy