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Good morning,

Most of my free time this week has gone into dusting off the ol’ travel brain. We're planning for our (2-year-delayed, thanks to COVID) honeymoon and feeling pumped to finally do this.

Getting deeeeeeep into the world of understanding credit card points has been a humbling experience; The Points Guy has been helpful so far, as is their app which tells you what your options are for using the points you have across cards. This week also featured: learning about airline miles, intra-Europe travel, various COVID rules/restrictions/travel insurance now that cases are going up, and researching the best packing cubes (these Baggu ones or these from Amazon look good). Whew!

Of course, it’s all been punctuated by “fun” travel planning stuff too, like rewatching a bunch of Rick Steves episodes and clicking through friends’ epic Google Docs of travel recs (bless these types of friends). Have you got travel on the brain? Keeping fingers and toes crossed that it'll be safe to travel in a few months.

—Alisha Ramos (@alisharamos)

P.S. Some fun news: we're launching an "Ask a Gen Zer" column soon 🎉—because our curiosity about what the young people are into these days is endless, and we're assuming yours is, too. Do you have a question for a Gen Zer, or about Gen Z? Email us here and we'll have our friend, Casey Lewis of youth culture newsletter After School, on the case.

This Week's Recommendations

Welcome to 3 Good Things, a new series where people we like recommend things they think are worth trying.

Clémence Vina Polès is a creative director, photographer & curator. I've long admired Clémence for ages now for her work as the founder of passerby, a magazine that celebrates the women who pass us by through intimate portraits, curated recommendations, and more.Half French, half Iranian and, raised in a skyscraper-less Dubai, Clémence has always had a deep curiosity and fascination with people—how they live, what they listen to, and what motivates them. She also co-founded the female film festival FFFest and is currently Director of Special Projects at social-impact driven communications firm No. 29. You can follow her @clemencepoles, if you'd like. Enjoy her recs, below.

1) A fresh perspective on love worth thinking about:

One of the best ideas I've ever had was to enroll in a philosophy class about love following a breakup (hit me up if you want the syllabus). Time heals, but for me, so does reading. I'm currently revisiting some of the course texts, along with the best critical theory on love. To start, I highly recommend a short read by Eric Fromm, titled The Art of Loving. I keep thinking of the following: “Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one's capacity to love.”⁠ It pairs quite well with a heartbreak playlist I made, as well as this round-up of films and books to mend heartbreak. 

2) An app worth trying:

A great option for tracking and understanding your cycle, Clue reminds you when you're about to be a hot mess (and lets you lean into it). It also tells you when you’re [most likely] ovulating which can be helpful if you’re sexually active.

3) A view on work life worth reflecting on:

I've been reading a lot about consumerism and capitalism to better understand my drives and work to divorce myself from some of them. I was really intrigued by Catherine Liu's polemic against the Professional Managerial Class (PMC), a class she identifies with, and I guess I do as well. She shows us how things like performative identity and virtue signaling stand in the way of social justice and economic redistribution — i.e., how the PMC signals progressiveness, yet serves capitalism. It was really eye-opening in how it highlights the disconnect and hypocrisy between some of our consumption habits or behaviors and what we perform to stand for. A great, snackable essay to prompt a little self-criticism and move away from what stands in the way of real change.

This Week's Reads

1. How to take things less personally and avoid mind reading. (Psyche)

2. Help! I Have a Shopping Problem. Includes helpful and practical tips, both psychological and structural (like deleting credit card numbers from autofill), for overspenders. (The Cut)

3. Your Camera Roll Contains a Masterpiece. “Our smartphones are stuffed with photos. The challenge is finding the good ones.” (The New Yorker)   

4. Should we all be  “romanticizing our lives?” (The New York Times)

5. Sushi As We Know It Will Not Survive. Can the Restaurant Industry Reinvent It? “Fish populations have shrunk while America’s appetite for sushi has only grown. Restaurants are starting to adapt—will it work?” (Bon Appétit)

6. What makes a great or terrible audiobook performance? (Vulture)

7. Fascinating: TikTok has an obsession with uncovering “nepotism babies” (The Face)

8. A modern day mystery, solved: A deep dive into why the Stanley tumbler is so popular  on social media. (The New York Times)