Curl up for a cozy wknd
Hello friends,
We did it! Welcome to the New Year. Are you off to roaring start?
I'm....not. The holidays were a mix of boisterous family time with a few quiet moments in between. While I'm not fully refreshed, I'm trying my best to use the momentum of a new year to my advantage (although the rot-girl desires persist!). And so, let's kick things off with the first weekend newsy of 2025!
Grab that second cup of coffee, curl up, and keep scrolling for all of the goods. In order to keep you inboxes quieter, I only send this email once per week, so it's always jam-packed. As always, you'll find curated recommendations for what to watch, listen to, read, and indulge in, and a few plucked headlines from the worlds of work, culture, and women. Plus, there are a few new pieces up on the blog to peruse, as well.
To fill the void during the week, come hang out on IG for funnies, vibes, and chit chat.
xo
Your Recommendations
📺 Watch
First of all, AppleTV+ is offering free streaming all weekend! Watch Hard Copy recommended shows like Slow Horses, season 1 of Severance, Bad Sisters seasons 1 and 2, and Shrinking.
In the barrage of holiday movies, I completely missed that Squid Games S2 is now available! Did you watch it?! (Netflix)
Landman is fantastic! The oilfields drama is set in West Texas, and stars the slick Billy Bob Thorton, megababe Ali Larter, and includes a very expensive looking Demi Moore and dapper-per-usual John Hamm. The show is based on the popular Boomtown podcast and gets into the nitty gritty subjects of climate, economy, and geopolitics. (Paramount+)
🎧 Listen
This playlist, aptly titled Girls Gone Mild, is one of my favourite playlists ever. I've had it on repeat all week!
For my country and folk lovers, enjoy the ease Jennifer Castle's latest album Camelot. If you're a fan of The Bear, you may recognize her first single of the album Blowing Kisses that scored one of the many Carmy montages.
If you've been trying to ignore everything for the past few weeks, you might have missed episodes 18, 19, and 20 of the Your Weekly Breakdown podcast. Pull up a chair and catch up with your silly and smart girlfriends in this weekly culture podcast.
📚 Read
Not going to lie, I didn't get as much time as I'd have liked to gobble up some books to recommend. Only two for you this week:
The first is An Honest Woman: a Memoir about Love and Sex Work by Charlotte Shane. It's slim but packs a bunch, and reads more like a think-piece than a salacious tell-all (although there's a hearty amount of the latter). I'm still thinking about it a week later, and enjoyed the philosophical nature of the memoir.
Our Evenings by Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst was a Christmas gift from my mother, and I have enjoyed luxuriating in this treasure of a novel. The author tracks both gay liberation and race relations in English from the 1960s through present day in a truly artful and moving way.
🛁 Indulge
To keep life simple, it's all about finding a few uniforms for the hibernation months. This outfit combination balances casual and chic, and megawatt comfort without sacrificing style.
Sunglasses, Khaite. Scarf, The Frankie Shop. Coat, Aritzia. Boots, Dr Martens. Bag, Anthropologie. Hair claw, Jennifer Behr.
On the Hard Copy blog this week
🎥 There's a K-drama for everyone
Squid Games who? Escape the post-holiday blues with binge-worthy TV shows that heal and inspire.
💫 Cosmic Culture: pop culture with a sprinkle of astrology
Scorpio season plunged us into the depth of our simmering emotions. Read on in our weekly column.
🖤 The worthwhile trend of romanticizing your life
Why do we feel the need to save life's finer things for special occasions?
🧠 4 ways to approach goal settings
If setting audacious 2025 resolutions isn't for you, why not test out a few tried-and-true (and manageable!) methods instead?
Elsewhere on the Interwebs
Tech + Work
Brain rot isn't just a buzzword: it's become a legitimate problem for those of us who love to read. The dopamine hit of smartphone scrolling makes reading a book feel more demanding, but you, dear reader, know that the rewards are definitely worth the effort. (FT)
Speaking of social media, were you hoping that bots would become a thing of the past? Don't hold your breath. Meta (née Facebook) announced it will unleash AI-generated characters to drive up engagement on it's platform as part of its broader rollout of AI products. However, in a very entertaining twist, Meta has begun deleting some of the characters it created after an outcry from, um, human users. While these Meta-generated accounts are being removed, users (human!!) still have the ability to generate their own AI chatbots. BRB, throwing my phone into the ocean. (Futurism, The Guardian)
Okay, can we finally deal with the Sunday Scaries once and for all? A recent survey found that about 75% of workers experience feelings of intense anxiety and dread before they return to work every Monday. Is it possible to get rid of the doom once and for all? Maybe. One doctor recommends quieting those ruminating thoughts with hobbies, scheduled down time, and beginning your mornings with ease. (Teen Vogue)
Women
Menopause and perimenopause are the wellness industry's latest gold rush. And is it any wonder? After years of being overlooked, women over 40 are now inundated with promises of relief from a bevy of symptoms that have long been ignored. (CBC)
One writer let the algorithm lead her to the depths of "glow up" culture, where your only job is to be as hot as humanly possible. Did it make her ugly on the inside? Yes.
I learned that no matter how much better you look at the end of your “glow-up journey” you will never be completely satisfied, that self-improvement only breeds the desire for more of it.
Her highly detailed account of the 75-day TikTok challenge is a great reminder for those of us more easily lured into ceaseless over-optimization. (Vox)
Unstructured hang out are a lost art, and we need to bring them back! It turns out that doing nothing with your favourite people is really, really good for you. The isolated grind we're all on is leading to stress and burnout, and is making us really lonely. (SELF)
Culture
Like the colour black, smoking never seems to go out of style with the fashion set. But stylish or not, as of January 1st, smoking is outlawed in all public spaces, including streets in Milan, Italy’s financial and fashion capital. (CNN)
Do you find everyone is always hating on everything? Disliking things is easy. What if we focused on finding and enjoying the good stuff? That seems to be the magic trick we all need right now. (Sasha Chapin)
The team behind Plastic List tested 100 everyday foods for plastic chemicals in the SF area. The results were disheartening: plastic chemicals were detected in 86% of the tested foods, which included both fresh and processed foods. Endocrine disruptors were also present, with phthalates present in 73% and bisphenols in 45%. (PlasticList)