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This Week We Recommend: Soho House, Obscenity Law, and the Real Cat Man

There's no accounting for taste, but ours is exquisite. Here are our favorite things on the Internet this week.
Image by Kat Aileen

Sarah:

Today, my heart ached reading this personal essay by one of my favorite British-Indian authors right now, Nikesh Shukla. As someone whose mother is also Gujarati, this really resonated with me. Gujarati culture values home cooked food as a symbol of family bonding and love. Those familiar smells, sights, and sounds of rotli (chapatti), thepla and shaak being made are what connects us to our heritage. It really touched me that something as simple as a staple food could have reignited a sense of belonging, and helped Shukla grieve his mother with a more positive perspective. I always stress that young people of colour shouldn't feel ashamed of their roots, and this is why.

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Zing:

This Guardian profile of Britain's most high-profile obscenity lawyer has it all: porn featuring a man in a tiger suit, anal fisting, obscure points of English law, BDSM clubs, and the immortal line: "I met his father in a dark room. We were doing barium meals and enemas." If this doesn't please you, I don't know what will.

Callie:

I recommend the legend of the real cat man, "Scotland's glowing-eyed, rat-eating mystery." Zing sent it to us when she misunderstood what Gabby's cat man article was about. It is the best thing I read this week.

Gabby:

I recommend <3 <3 <3 #SALMONS <3 <3 <3.

Lauren:

As someone who has alternated pining for nice things and inclusivity in exclusive clubs with a vaguely ideological rejection of egregious material wealth and fine-I-don't-like-you-anyway intellectual snobbery, I liked Alice Gregory's ambivalent but alright-with-it conclusion on the cool-seeming perks of paying for a Soho House membership. I don't want one, but I do.