Never News: Heart-shaped newsletter

[We find our narrator sitting criss cross apple sauce on the floor of her study. Around her are strewn scraps of paper in pink, white, and red, along with a variety of craft supplies: glitter glue, puffy paint, white and red lace ribbon, and so on.

She's currently focused on scribbling something on a glittering, red heart cut out of construction paper. Looking at it, you realize it's not a language you recognize, but rather glyphs — shapes and symbols that are totally foreign to you. She doesn't hear you come in and continues her work, muttering under her breath. Suddenly, the writing begins to glow, the paper heart lifts into the air, catches fire, and is instantly turned to ash.

Finally sensing your approach, she jerks her head up to meet your gaze. Smiling nervously and without looking down, she hastily shuffles the mound of ash into a to-go cup and puts it aside.]

Hello kittens, and a happy early Valentine's Day to you! I genuinely love Valentine's Day — I think it's an excuse to tell the people you love in your life that you love them. And frankly, the "people who love Halloween" crossover with "people who also love Valentine's Day" should be studied at the collegiate level. Anyway! You know the drill: this is Never News, the every-two-weekly newsletter that I, Producer Georgia, type out for you with my delicate little hands. Let's get going:

Some Internet aperitifs...

Hate to do this to you but I feel obligated: more news as big tech rolls back even more restrictions and general respect for human beings. But on a lighter note, since when were olives and oysters the "it girl" of foods? Also, an ode to the viral devotion to the capybara, an animal I almost always find unsettling unless it's in one of those yuzu baths (sorry don't yell at me!!!). And finally, a piece on a topic that has united many folks across internet channels over the years: misophonia, the hatred of the sound of people chewing food.

And now for the main courses...

404 MEDIA: Zuck Complains of Leaks In Leaked Report

I couldn't subject you to Mark's face, so I found an emoji for befitting of him. But I do hope you read this, a delicious piece of schadenfreude. The headline of this article says it all — it seems like Mr. Zuckerberg is growing peeved by how much internal Meta info is being leaked to the press, decrying the sharing of "value-destroying" information as "a little bit of a bummer." Oh, Mark! May I be the first to say to you, a man who has dedicated his career to exploiting user data, sidling up to and aligning himself with the slimiest men in the world, and making the Internet a more dangerous, hateful place...aw rats!

SHOW NEWS: A new mailbag episode!!!

Hark! We have a new mailbag episode for you in the main feed! This time, Mike, Jason, Hans, and myself talk David Social, KOSA/cyber panics, my TikTok segment from the XOXO Fest live show (and how online shopping is similar to, of all things, parasites), and more! This is also a great moment for me to say that you simply MUST continue sending us amazing graffiti that you see out in the world, and also any "timeline cleansing" videos/audios you find — we have a great one this week in the ep. Mike also introduces us based on who he thinks spent the most time at the mall as teens and I FOR ONE was SIMPLY SHOCKED by who was number 1.

SLATE: AI as the creepy guest at the party who never leaves

In the last few months I, and I'm sure many of you, have noticed an uptick in the AI widgets that various platforms have adopted. The rollout of these features isn't so much announced as chirped at me with an ominous enthusiasm that instantly puts me on edge. Since when did the Meta AI instantly pop up if I start spelling something with a-i in an Instagram DM? This piece from Slate takes you through the unsettling and surprisingly difficult experience of trying to remove Google's Gemini AI feature, and explores the cheerily threatening quality of these widgets writ large.

THE GUARDIAN: The long history of tech bro conservatism

It's easy to see the current cadre of utter loser tech guys (your Zucks, your Elons, etc) kissing the ring of the Far Right and imagine it as a modern fad, but this excellent piece in The Guardian is here to tell you that it is not. In fact, the celebration of the tech entrepreneur as a kind of mini-God is decades old, as is that figure's ties to a hard line conservatism that is masked as innovation. It's been extremely overwhelming to follow the news this week, and stuff like this helps me put things into perspective, so I hope it offers you the same feeling.

And that's all for this week's Never News. May you all have a Valentine's Day that is a sweet reminder that love — romantic, platonic, whatever — is one of the most powerful tools we have. At the very least, I hope you get a decadent dessert for yourself.

Since TikTok currently remains active in the U.S., we're back to our regularly scheduled format of ending the newsletter. Today I bring you this essential reminder in dark times: