By Leslie T Chang

British food writer Fuchsia Dunlop has become a celebrity in China for explaining Chinese cuisine back to the Chinese, with her memoir selling 200,000 copies and earning her the nickname "Fu Xia." This Guardian profile traces how a Cambridge graduate who enrolled at Sichuan's culinary institute in the 1990s became an authority by documenting a disappearing world, from Chengdu's charcoal braziers and open-air markets to Boss Xie's legendary noodle shop that was demolished for development in 2001. Her new book argues that China pioneered modern food concepts like farm-to-table, terroir, and imitation meat centuries before the West, and that Song dynasty Hangzhou had sophisticated restaurants 600 years before Paris. Meanwhile, today's China has abandoned traditional healthy eating, with 30 percent of calories now coming from animal products versus 9.5 percent in 1990, obesity increasing five-fold, and a generation in their 20s and 30s who don't know how to cook and rely on delivery apps instead.

by Christopher Spata

A Tampa couple used a home insemination kit and a friend's sperm to have a baby in 2020, but when they divorced, the donor quietly replaced one mother on the birth certificate, sparking a legal battle now before Florida's Supreme Court. This Tampa Bay Times investigation reveals a booming gray market for sperm donations, with Facebook groups connecting freelance donors who charge double what sperm banks pay (around $300 versus $150) and one Pasco County man claiming he's made "hundreds" of donations in two years. DIY insemination kits from companies like Mosie Baby and Frida are sold at CVS for $50, compared to $500 to $1,000 per cycle at clinics plus $800 to $1,500 for a vial of banked sperm. The legal chaos stems from Florida law defining sperm donors in relation to using a laboratory, creating a gray zone for home inseminations where different appeals courts have issued contradictory rulings about whether donors can claim parental rights years later.

By Kurt Streeter, Visuals by Ruth Fremson

A Seattle facilities manager nearing retirement read a 2014 newspaper feature about a 92-year-old typewriter repairman and felt something stir he couldn't quite name. This New York Times piece follows how Paul Lundy started visiting Bob Montgomery's fifth-floor Bremerton shop on Saturdays, learning to repair machines over 90-minute BLT lunches where the old man would tell stories between bites. When eviction crews arrived over $2,600 in unpaid rent, Lundy bought the business on the spot, quit his job with benefits, and spent the next four years working alongside Montgomery until the old man died at 96 in 2018. Now Lundy runs the shop from a renovated 1910 building while rock bands practice in the basement, fielding calls from novelists and screenwriters across the country as typewriter sales have exploded since 2020. He's 65 now, the age he would have retired, but works six days a week teaching apprentices the way Montgomery taught him: "It'll always be his. I am just borrowing it."

By Brenda Medina

Cryptocurrency is mostly legal in 45 nations, partially banned in 20 and generally banned in 10, creating a global patchwork that ranges from China's total prohibition to El Salvador making bitcoin legal tender. This ICIJ explainer sorts countries into four categories: red light nations like China and Algeria that ban crypto entirely (though 60 million Chinese still own it underground), yellow light jurisdictions like the EU and Japan with comprehensive oversight laws, green light countries like El Salvador and the UAE that embrace crypto with industry-friendly rules, and "under construction" places like India and Nigeria where regulations are vague or unevenly enforced. The EU's MiCA regulation that took full effect in December 2024 requires crypto companies to get licenses and stablecoin issuers to keep reserves, while Trump signed the Genius Act requiring similar stablecoin rules in the US, though critics warn of loopholes that could "open the floodgates" to financial meltdown.

2021: The Guardian: A dog’s inner life: what a robot pet taught me about consciousness

2021: Afar Magazine: Once Upon a Time in Central Florida

Really hope you enjoyed the selection of stories today. I am always interested in hearing from you. If you have thoughts on how I can make this email even better, do not hesitate to reach out.

Brett

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