Barack and Michelle Obama

What are you up to this weekend? We just started the TV show Succession, at long last (everyone I knew seemed to be raving about it). And I just started this book, and it’s really gripping. Hope you have a good one, and here are a few fun links from around the web…

The simplest spaghetti al limone.

Life hack: Leave your headphones at home.

LOVE these black pants.

The best romantic comedy you probably haven’t seen.

Design mistake: Painting a small, dark room white.

25 words that are their own opposites. Weird!

How to get your kids to eat a giant tray of vegetables. (Plus, 8 more ways to get kids to eat greens.)

A marriage trick. “Successful marriages are defined not by improvement, but by avoiding decline.”

Impossible pork is here!

How to help those affected by the Australian wildfires.

Plus, two reader comments:

Says Elizabeth on a Prince Harry and Meghan Markle question: “I’m 60. When I turned 58, I started getting a master’s degree in history. It won’t help me with work, my agency isn’t paying for it, when school is in session I have absolutely no free time, and I’m an oddity to the professors and my fellow grad students. My husband and a few friends are supportive, but everyone else says, ‘Is this really worth it?’ ‘You have to use vacation time for reading and writing? That sucks!’ and ‘You could just read the books yourself.’ I can’t explain to myself why I’m doing this, but I am so grateful for this experience. To feel your mind expand is so exhilarating. To watch the perspectives of students shift before your eyes is life-affirming. To bang out the right sentence, to read a passage that brings the past to life, to pick up a letter written a hundred years ago from a source you’ve been researching is absolutely glorious. Sometimes you have to have faith that your inner voice will steer you toward the right path, even if you don’t know why you hear that voice.”

Says Rose on a Prince Harry and Meghan Markle question: “In the fifth grade, I had two options: be a hot girl or be a cool girl. I decided I wanted to be warm, not as in mediocre but as in: loving and kind. I think it’s worked pretty well — I’ve never been either cool, or hot, lol, but would like to think I’ve succeeded in sharing as much warmth and kindness as possible.”

(Photo of the Obamas by Pete Souza.)