On June 22nd, visitors to Slate Star Codex, a long-standing blog of considerable influence, discovered that the site’s cerulean banner and graying WordPress design scheme had been superseded by a barren white layout. In the place of its usual catalogue of several million words of fiction, book reviews, essays, and miscellanea, as well as at least as voluminous an archive of reader commentary, was a single post of atypical brevity.

THERE IS A THEORY that people are more productive in beautiful office spaces. If this theory were true, then Office E, in Berlin, Germany must have the highest levels of productivity ever.

These past summer days, I have been lounging around reading Find Me by André Aciman, the author of Call me By your Name. Contrary to what everyone expected, he wrote on twitter: “I would actually love a sequel to Call Me By Your Name. In fact I am writing one.”

I’ll begin with the story of YS Falls, a set of cascading drops and cool, clear pools set in a Jamaican rainforest. It’s in Saint Elizabeth parish, where for a few years now I’ve been taking my son on vacation. Saint Elizabeth is a beautiful part of the country, far off the beaten path; to reach it from Montego Bay or Kingston takes four or five hours on bad roads.

IF YOU’VE BEEN READING for a while, you will know of our love for farm and country house style lately, and why we would be naturally drawn to this wonderful 19th century home in the centre of Barcelona.

ON SATURDAY NIGHT, we went to the one pub in town that was open, our first time out in over 15 weeks of lockdown. There was a roaring fire, friendly people, even a happy black lab. It wasn’t exactly the same as always, of course, with hand sanitiser stations and social distancing, but everyone was nevertheless in good spirits, happy to finally see other people around, even if from a safe distance.