Morning Brew - 🔥 CVO

Even on our Minimum Viable Workdays, Slack makes remote work more fun. We can joke with our bestie during the company all-hands and beg Rachel not to leave. (What, just us? Shoot.)

As The Atlantic’s special projects editor Ellen Cushing pointed out in a new feature, it’s kinda wild to think that Slack began in 2012 as the Flickr founder’s side piece. Cushing landed an interview with Slack founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield, and we learned he likes to vape as well as some other things of note regarding corporate America’s “Trojan horse”:

• 8,000 companies signed up within 24 hours of Slack’s launch. Today, more than 169,000 companies use it (including Morning Brew).
• Slack employs a sound designer, Josh Mobley, who modeled the platform’s notification sounds after jazz percussion.
• Alongside fame, adoration, and juicy profiles, Slack has occasionally fallen in with the wrong crowd: executives who criticize their colleagues and even teachers mocking students on the platform.
• It can also be a place for workers to organize and discuss issues like fair pay, sometimes to employers’ chagrin. Cushing wrote: “In August, Apple blocked employees from starting a Slack channel devoted to discussing pay equity, citing a policy that Slack activity ‘must advance the work, deliverables, or mission of Apple departments and teams.’ (Channels about dad jokes, pets, and gaming were left alone.)”

For those last two, Butterfield doesn’t blame his product: “It’s a general-purpose technology. And people do mostly good stuff with computers generally, but people also use computers to do bad stuff, like put ransomware on hospitals. There’s a fundamental kind of moral reckoning with technology right now that if a technology has a bad use and also many good uses, should we take it away in order to prevent the bad use?”

What do you think? Hit reply and let us know.

Your homemade PSL needs a cauldron mug—and more cozy szn essentials.

• You heard us: Get into spooky season formation with a pumpkin- or cauldron-shaped mug. And for you modern witches, yes, they’re dishwasher safe.
• After a long day in your company sweatshirt, change into something more comfortable: Brooklinen’s lightweight waffle robe made of Turkish cotton.
• Every couch potato fashionista knows your blanket needs to make a statement. Wasi’s colorful inti face throw, with its bold print and fringe trim, will wow your spouse.
• Roots makes cozy, genderless socks in seven varsity-themed colors—and that’s as athletic as we plan to be this fall.
• Meet our new WFH uniform: a fluffy cardigan and pants set from Uniqlo. At less than $50 for both pieces, it’s an affordable alternative to the Skims version.

Read: Kumail may be ripped these days, but he turns soft boi in E. Alex Jung’s new profile.

Listen: Seth Rogan’s latest venture (no, we’re not talking about his weed brand) is a podcast called Storytime, where guests detail chance encounters with Paul Rudd...and grizzly bear fights!

Watch: Do you dare try the viral #honeycombchallenge from Squid Game? Binging with Babish gave it a go.

A few ways to drink mindfully this Sober October:

• To drink, not to drink, or do a little flexi-drinking—that’s the question. On Tuesday, 10/19, tune in to a virtual panel on sober swaps with experts in the nonalcoholic beverage space, moderated by Rachel (told you it wasn’t goodbye!).
• These West Elm cocktail glasses are so classy it actually hurts. They come in two sizes—“cooler” for your virgin mojitos and “rocks” for your peppy palomas.
• Ghia makes canned mocktails with a lil fizz and a whole lotta herbaceousness. The new Ghia Ginger Le Spritz—made with ginger beer and wildflower honey—has even more flavor than the OG Ghia Soda.
• This recipe for a Tea-Totaler’s Toddy is low in ABV, high in caffeine (unless you use decaf but nah), and full of warmth for a night in—under a 15-lb. weighted blanket ofc.
• To the Sidekick reader who said candy corn fans have their “own special circle of hell,” look away. This candy corn punch recipe is loaded with refined sugars, orange flavors, and, of course, our beloved controversial Halloween treat.