Hey ,I don't know about you, but it's been a pretty colourful week for me! Just as I was nearly done unpacking my boxes early this week, someone tried to break in to my apartment! It's the first time it happens to me. As I'm sending many messages out to catch up with friends and industry acquaintances old and new, and I mostly work from home at the moment otherwise, I don't have a fixed schedule. I left my house for a lunch catch-up on Tuesday at 12:30pm, and the building's gardienne left me a message at 2pm - someone had broken my lock. Luckily my upstairs neighbour and one of her children scared the burglar away as they were walking down the stairs right before they managed to open my door. The police and then the locksmiths came by, it took them like 2 minutes to open the door just fiddling with a screwdriver. Pretty scary stuff, and at the same time I was relieved they didn't get in! Frankly there's not much to be stolen in my place other than piles of books, a few board games, Ikea bookshelves, a 7 year old projector, a Nintendo Switch, and a Playstation 3 (I had my laptop with me). Nevertheless, I kind of know intellectually that I'm in a wealthy minority even though I don't come from a rich background, and this was an experience to get I'm a potentially rich target woth robbing given where I live. Paris is the most densely populated city in Europe,  and while it keeps the image of romance, it's also much more than that, as this piece in The Guardian's Observer covers: Paris, city of romance, rues new image as the dirty man of Europe.Fortunately I should be covered by my home insurance and I'm getting a brand new seriously secure lock and door now, which should dissuade opportunistic burglars and vandals. While a little shaken, I'm also clear this is home and I don't want to go anywhere right now. Paris is beautiful and chaotic, lofty and messy, inspiring and edgy, and I love it.Now on to some stories for the week!Best,Willem

 Weekly Combo Two or three flavours, interesting separately, fascinating together 

You may have heard that DisneyLand in California and DisneyWorld in Florida recently opened their Star Wars Galaxy's Edge area this summer, and moreover that apparently didn't at all have the amount of visitors they expected. Quite a few articles report the opening as a failure, and apparently a Disney exec left or was fired over it.Out of two planned, only one ride is open, and while the area looks gorgeous from the photos, seeing the ride in a video didn't seem hugely appealing to me - or at least not really worth a long queue. I'm not sure they took into account a core theme park audience, those interested in rides and roller coasters, not did they give much by way of hommages or content to the original Star Wars trilogy, favouring the current movies timeline (and possibly off-putting a portion of the fan base). The second ride is apparently delayed, and it's also possible many possible visitors have waited for the area to be complete before investing time and money into a trip. All that said, this long read from Die Hard Star Wars fans visiting the new attraction for their wedding anniversary was a lovely and refreshing change from disaster clickbait headlines. Lots of photos too if you just feel like browsing rather than reading everything.

To segue from the previous piece, food innovation is all the rage as the largest food brands heavily compete for people's time, attention, money, and taste buds. Of course that included the new Disney Star Wars Galaxy's Edge area previously mentioned. Coca-Cola earned some notice (and a flight ban) from thos newly designed 'Galactic Bottles".Moving on to fast foods, you may have come across an increasing amount of headlines for improbable blends and remixes of junk and fast foods, like the Taco Bell Doritos Taco Loco, or the KFC Cheetos sandwich. If you ever wondered where and how all those ideas come from, look no further than this piece from Fast Company. It's both fascinating and revolting to see how ideas come from mixing and mashing existing stuff together, and at the same time just like Star Wars and many other popular media properties, there seems to be increasingly less volition to try anything all that new, and rely on picking pretty sure bets. It's probably safer (and perhaps cheaper) to make a Cheetos KFC sandwich than it might be for  FKC to invent a new flavour from scratch, they can ride on the cheesy snack's popularity. Disney thought the same about Star Wars but something seems potentially amiss there, so it  doesn't always seem to be the best strategy.