Is Serge Gainsbourg on this album? Yes and no. Jane Birkin has written her former lover into most of her music since his death, in a way that reveals her to have been more collaborator than muse. Her new album processes the loss of Serge and Charlotte, their daughter, through songs about mortality interspersed with the classic quotidian comedy of French-language pop. The album’s title line— “Oh! Sorry, you were sleeping…”— comes with a response: “Yes but I’m not any more, as you can well see.” Come for the tragedy and stay for the wit. Listen here.

Are we tired of talking about Bon Appétit yet? Evidently the answer is “no,” because after the twitter storm, the boss firing, the articles on the boss firing, the instagram posturing, the Reply-All recap, Reply-All fallout, and the recap of the Reply-All fallout, now we’re getting an HBO show about the Test Kitchen. Not content with merely forcing the people involved to relive their traumas as they’re dramatized on the national stage, the network has chosen to make the show a COMEDY (for which they are at least paying Ryan Walker-Hartshorn, Adam Rapoport’s former assistant, to consult). It’s the shit show that keeps on giving.*

*extracting value from its under-compensated staff

The BA scandal honestly has more fuel than anything the magazine has ever produced on purpose. But after this year, what food business is actually doing what they meant to? Seeing the outlook for restaurants, chefs are making bets instead on their #personalbrands via DEMI, a platform where chefs host group chats (like the WhatsApp kind, not Zoom) and fans pay $10 a month to ask their food questions and shoot the shit around whatever topics the chefs like. Are we selling food? No. But you can bet we’re making it work.

Who in here has lost an hour to Vivino? Their supremely fun app scans wine labels to pull up ratings of each bottle, which, if you’re dedicated, can make for a long and delightful guessing game in the wine store with friends. Now that they’ve reached massive scale with their free wine reviews (they say they have 50 million users???), they’re pulling a power pivot and setting up to sell bottles direct through their platform. Is this potentially an antitrust issue? Sure. But that’s what makes the big bucks.