A very relatable mom

It's unfair when people think you're having an affair with Elon Musk but you just wanted to learn more about using brain-microchips to cure autism

I have been a paid subscriber of People magazine for many years. I have seen a lot of flattering profiles of mothers in the magazine over time. Rarely have I seen one with so many … details all stacked up on top of each other as I did in this recent profile titled “I Survived a Public Shaming.”

I highlighted the things that most stood out to me but I’ll summarize below:

tl;dr:

Nicole Shanahan is a woman who met her future husband, Google co-founder and world’s 11th-richest man Sergey Brin, at a yoga festival. They connected over shared passions like quantum physics.

It turns out married to a billionaire was not all that. However, it did allow Nicole to fund an institute focused on women being able to bear children later in life and maybe never going into menopause (“We believe we can profoundly alter the societal balance toward equality for women by defining what leads to menopause and developing interventions to slow or reverse it for greater quality of life.”)

Perhaps tangentially related to the topic of older parents, Nicole and Brin have an autistic child.

Nicole is interested in curing autism.

She is soliciting advice from people like Elon Musk on how to achieve this.

Nicole happened to be the subject of public ridicule after her association with Musk was, she says, inaccurately represented as an affair. Nicole is merely interested in Elon Musk company’s ability to use the Neuralink brain chip implant to cure autism.

Nicole meanwhile continues meeting rich men at festivals; her current love partner is a VP at a tech firm whom she met at Burning Man.

I say “love partner” because they had a love ceremony where she wore one thing and he wore something very different:

Nicole wanted people to know these facts about her and took part in a photo shoot to make sure this information about her gets out in the world. Her story and its accompanying spread take up four printed pages in People, twice as much as the story about Alan Arkin’s death.

I sincerely wish her child the best.

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“Non-depressing” budget recipe ideas requested

A friend posted this somewhere and I thought it was a good question at a time of year when so much summer food relies on farmers market this and nice meat that:

“At the risk of sounding like a Mormon Pinterest mom, I have recently found myself thinking about ways to cut my family’s food budget without, you know, living on ramen. Even when I’m making a light trip to the grocery store—no meat, poultry, or fish; no fancy treats; no $20 bottles of wine—I end up spending A LOT. I know I should get back into the habit of watching sales, but I’m also wondering if any witches might want to share some budget-friendly meals that aren’t depressing.”

PS: This witch’s nearest Hmart is more than 100 miles away, Trader Joe’s is 90 miles, Whole Foods is 60 miles, and Costco is 30 miles, for ingredients context.

Email me any recipes or strategies you turn to at ew.clairezulkey@gmail.com or drop them in the comments that make a lot of good food for not a lot of $ (I may run this in an upcoming free issue.)

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One witchy thing

Me talking severe weather shit with some witchy friends last week when the tornado siren inconveniently went off at dinner time on a weeknight: