The sweetest thing

the best berries I've never eaten

Last night I gave an impassioned speech to my father about the miracles of GMO. I’d just read this piece in the Wall Street Journal about Driscoll’s berry gene editing and the unending quest for better tasting berries. They’re selling the best berries that for whatever reason aren’t ready for mass production and calling them “Sweetest Batch.” You gotta read it, I promise it will fill you with wonder and delight. (And I’m sorry that it is behind a paywall online, my grandmother gets the paper delivered and we get her cast-off’s.)

I realized mid-speech that I sounded a little crazy going on and on about genetically superior sweet corn, and then I knew I had to subject you all to the crazy too.

My dad’s friends have been telling him that GMO’s are bad, which to me is an infuriating topic. Right up there with climate change denial. Because the truth is that modern GMO’s are just the next step in the selective breeding humans have been doing for thousands of years.

Now we get to do things like put more vitamin A in rice, possibly saving the lives of millions of children if only the fear mongers would stop spreading misinformation. There’s nuance to be had here, of course, Monsanto is still destroying the Earth, but why should that stop us from developing cotton candy grapes and cosmic crisp apples? They’re delicious wonders of modern science!

My friend Greta once loaned me a book by her old co-worker called Food Explorer all about the ways that the foods in our modern grocery stores came to be there. A remarkable number of them didn’t exist even a century ago.

Like the hass avocado — a mailman named Rudolph Hass grafted avocado trees in his backyard until he got to the black-skinned meaty avocados we know and love today. He patented them in 1935, and they didn’t become the dominant avocado variety in grocery stores until the 70’s. Your great-grandparents never ate avocado toast as good as the one you have today (though they did get to buy a house, so there are trade offs to being a millennial.)

Think about it for a moment: we humans, smart little hairless apes, have found a way to force evolution to go faster just so we can eat brussel sprouts that doesn’t taste like feet. That is incredible.

So have I convinced you yet? Do you now want to go eat Driscoll’s Sweetest Batch raspberries and savor each wildly expensive bite while thanking the miracle of modern science? Me too.

The market didn’t have any sweetest batch, so my search continues. But these standard raspberries were still delicious.

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In other news…

Alec Baldwin is going through it

The involuntary manslaughter trial for the death of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins began yesterday. In October 2021, Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun that was mistakenly (negligently) loaded with live ammunition and killed Hutchins who was standing behind the camera. The assistant armorer who handed Baldwin the gun, Hannah Guttierez-Reed, has already been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. I found this legal explainer piece very helpful.

Meanwhile, the Baldwins are trying to keep the SEO trending positive (key word trying) with a new reality show on the big-family-obsessed network TLC, of course. In case you forgot, Alec Baldwin currently has seven children under 11 years old. He’s 66, his wife Hilaria is 40. She is probably best known for pretending she was from Spain, faking a Spanish accent and “forgetting” how to say cucumber on the Today Show. Turns out her name is Hillary and she’s from Boston, but she identifies as “culturally fluid,” whatever that means.

The whole thing is a tragicomic mess; if it weren’t for the very real harm he was involved in causing the Hutchins family, I’d be able to watch the spectacle guilt-free. But even with the ick-factor, I just can’t look away. And if he goes to prison? TLC will just roll with it.

ICYMI

• Lena Dunham dropped out of the Polly Pocket movie. Let us pray that another indie darling comes to our collective rescue. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, are you free?

• JoJo Siwa is getting a docu-series. I probably won’t watch it, but I can’t wait for the pull quotes. She’s giving Miley in her Wrecking Ball era.

• Derek Blasberg pooped all over Gweneth Paltrow’s guest bedroom and bathroom. Like, so much poopie that she had to re-decorate. And he didn’t even try to clean up! Just disappeared into the night! Even if you don’t know who Derek Blasberg is, maybe especially if you don’t know who he is, this story is worth the journey. Read Hunter Harris’s newsletter for the best download on this. But my favs at Who? Weekly also went very long on it in this week’s episode.

• I’m so sorry to bring this to your attention, but the hawk tuah girlie just got an agent. What a world we live in.

Peace & Love & Happy Berry Season!