Never News: hydrate or die-drate
Hello hotties! If you, like me, are underneath the wrath of the Heat Dome that is cooking a good half of the United States right now, I offer you a very sweaty, very sunscreen-covered "hello." To the rest of you I say...what's it like to enjoy being outside?
ANYWAY, you know the drill: welcome to Never News, the every-two-weekly newsletter that I, Producer Georgia, pen to you at my oaken writing desk with a calligrapher's quill. Let's jump into these cool waters, shall we?
Some Internet aperitifs...
ICE protests have arrived, of all places, at Roblox. But Roblox is also, unfortunately, the site of some...not so great activities, as well. An intrepid reporter asks: can you out-troll the trolls? Elsewhere, turns out ChatGPT is making our thoughts more homogenous. Imagine me taking a long, exhausted pull of a cigarette before I say this to you: apparently there's a dating app that will match you to someone based on your browser history. And on a happier note on love, today marks the 10th anniversary of the legalization of gay marriage in the United States. Here's a very sweet piece about it, with personal stories of that day. Happy pride month this year and every year, my lovelies.
And now, for the main courses...
SUBSTACK: the siren song of the big huge water bottle
I've been struggling to put into words why the current trend of Big Huge Water Bottles — namely coming from Stanley but also through other brands like Owala — has made me feel so weird. Enter: this excellent Substack essay from Caitlin Dewey. The world of B.H.W.B.'s (forgive me, I love making a term for something) is not just relegated to the vehicle of extreme hydration that you choose, but it's also, of course, related to the kind of water you drink. Caitlin deems this "performative hydration," a term that certainly sounds fitting to me. There's plenty of your tell-tale wellness nonsense within this fad. But there is also something uniquely unsettling about that familiar brand of badness when it's attached to water — the most essential, bare bones thing we all must consume.
SHOW NEWS: a new Slow Post for you sleepyheads
Did you know that as a Never Post member, you get (among many other exciting things) access to ANOTHER ENTIRE PODCAST that we make? It's called Slow Post, and it's a sleep aid podcast. But NOT JUST THAT — the show uses one of our voices (an AI version, to be sure) to read through Wikipedia articles at a slow, methodical pace, switching articles after reaching a certain number of hyper linked words. The reviews are in: this thing works. So if you are someone desperate to get some shut-eye and also want to blandly learn about an obscure corner of the Wiki-verse at the same time, get in here! And if this piques your interest, you know how to get access to this good, good stuff: neverpo.st and click "become a member."
VOX: the discourse's discourse on women has me winded
If you're on the same corners of TikTok that I am, your FYP has been busy with sweaty takes about Sabrina Carpenter's latest album cover. Some said it was satire, others said it fails that assignment, and vehement defenders of both camps have taken the conversation to such extremes that you'd think this one image was either the greatest achievement of "there's no such thing as bad press" or the sign of the end times. This piece from Vox covers that, along with the way that terms like "pick-me" have been replaced with being called "not a girl's girl" or, more broadly, "not for the girlies." I find this piece...complicated, and I don't like some of the ways it frames this topic. I also personally do not feel strongly enough about Sabrina Carpenter to have the energy to throw my hat into the ring of this particular conversation. But I do think it's worth noting the way conversations like this happen online when it comes to famous women and who they are allegedly performing themselves for.
I wanted to include something that talked about the recent news of Zohran Mamdani's win to be the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor this week. This piece, from New York Magazine, is exactly what I was looking for. It covers a lot of the feelings I was talking to my own friends about throughout this news cycle — how it feels unreal to have some good political news in a climate that seems to only deliver the most terrifying, misery-inducing news at a clip that is impossible to keep up with lest we all go completely insane. In an unrelenting period of time, this is a very welcome reprieve.
And that's all for this week's installment of Never News. As we deal with this heat wave, I offer a tip I learned during my many years of playing soccer: if you're overheated and need to cool off quickly, put something cold on your wrists, the inside of your elbows, and the back of your knees. Stay hydrated, stay cool, stay in the shade. Ciao for now.