On loving predictability but needing spontaneity 🍄

➕ Bel's latest chime, a helicopter crash in Ukraine, & more of your tragic obsessions as kids 🧃

Hi angels!! Hope wherever and however you’re reading this newsy you’re thriving!!! Yesterday we had a HUGE day on the tools getting this break-up project ready for you 👀 but celebrated sending the first drafts of everything off by having an after-work game of Dungeons and Dragons. If you thought we’d left our D&D era (or you weren’t around last year when we started playing so didn’t even know we were in this era) you’re WRONG!! It’s just notoriously hard to organise us all (and our gorg dungeon master) but last night we did it!! I know I’ve said it before, but for anyone wanting to grow/ flex their imagination muscles - this game is for you. (Plus, Wil Wheaton is a SYSCA bestie/ newsy reader like you all and he would be very proud if u all started playing I’m sure.) I should also add that there is a bit of drama in the D&D community right now, so if you’re interested in how capitalism can ruin something ELSE, you should go and read about it.

LOVE ISLAND IS STARTING AGAIN SO I’M GOING TO MAKE A THREAD ABOUT IT!!!

Love Island UK IS BACK!!! The first episode dropped in NZ yesterday (it’s their winter edish where they send the contestants to South Africa to film) and I am SO ready for it to be my comfort show/ take up my whole personality. Anyway, if any of you are watching along, I’m thinking of starting a weekly thread in our Substack chat to drop our thoughts/ feelings and just so we have a place to hang out!! Eeeeeeeek can’t wait.

• 🔔 Bel Chimes In: With a new season and a new favourite concept to think about🍉

• Ukraine’s minister for internal affairs is among at least 14 people killed in a helicopter crash near Kyiv

• Turns out you all had a bunch of weird/tragic hyperfixations as kids too

• BOYGENIUS IS BACK

• Today’s mundane poll is brought to you by Sara (who apologises for it being a bit gross)

🔔 Bel Chimes In: With a new season and a new favourite concept to think about 🍉

This section is written by my crush, the refreshing-as-a-house-chardonnay-on-a-steamy-day, Bel Hawkins. She also writes our Saturday newsletter ‘No News is Good News’ which all our paying supporters receive. Upgrade your plan to get her newsy here!

Besties! Wow have I got a story for you.

Ok, lol, not really, but a dramatic recount of the last 10 days I've spent recovering from what turned out to be Strep Throat (someone asked me if this was from making out with a lot of cuties on my recent holiday, and I'd love to say yes, but the answer is no), and marinating in my own mortality in my treehouse, wondering when it will end and whether I'll truly feel normal again and whether anyone will remember me once I'm back in my real life. I feel like, for a time there,  I was 100% made up of pineapple Fruju iceblocks and chicken soup and all my mind could do was spiral into thoughts about all the things I should have done last year.

In a shocking revelation, I'm ok again! (lol) which means I can quill you this week with a bit more clarity and je nais se quois .Thanks for being here to help me phoenix! 

It's also an auspicious time as tomorrow marks the start of Aquarius season (my personal favourite, selfishly because I'm one myself, and they're notoriously the hardest to predict of the zodiac and sorry if you don't believe in stars, but it's the truth as far as I can tell). So here are your seasonal ins and outs below: 

And for something to talk about? This week, I wanted to introduce you to one of my favourite concepts, which is called putting a line out and taking a chance on something you might want.

And I'm telling you about it because on Saturday afternoon, when I was by the sea with my besties wrapped in a polar fleece blanket trying to recover, everyone was talking about the bleak shock of returning to work and how important it is to have something to look forward to. We LOVE predictability (what time we have to get up to go to work, knowing what the weather will be like), but we NEED spontaneity and surprising, scary big, bright or even small things to happen, right?

So my challenge to you, if you're feeling bleak/intimidated by a whole week ahead, is to put a line out in the water to see what might come back. Like... DMing a crush, signing up to something, asking out a potential friend, emailing your boss at work, messaging someone to catch up for a mentor session, pitching an idea — anything that kinda shows the universe... what you want. Idk, lmk what you think and tell me how it goes 💘

LASTLY - Absolutely vibing to be in the inboxes of paying subscribers this Saturday, where we go into this in more detail,  I'll share some incredibly hot music for you to listen to, and we talk about the pleasures and dangers of flying solo in a world made for twos. Sounds cute? You know what to do.

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Ukraine’s minister for internal affairs is among at least 14 people killed in a helicopter crash near Kyiv

Damn, you know it’s been a bad week in the air when I’ve written about two significant plane crashes in one week. Yesterday a helicopter carrying Ukrainian officials crashed in a Kyiv suburb, near a kindergarten, killing 14 people. Among these people were Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs and “other pivotal figures in the wartime leadership.”

At this stage it’s not known what caused the crash, but there’s no evidence to suggest - right now - that it had been shot down. If you want to stay up to date, there’s more on this story (and the ongoing war) here!

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Turns out you all had a bunch of weird/tragic hyperfixations as kids too

Yesterday I wrote about this theory someone had on Twitter, suggesting that we all had some sort of weird tragic event that we became obsessed with as a kid. Somebody then posited that you were either a “titanic, Anne Frank, or Salem witch trials girl’ and I wanted to test this theory. Turns out we don’t all fit into those three categories - BUT - a bunch of us did seem to be obsessed with something tragic as kids. Here are some of your responses:

• “Lol I was a bubonic plague kid as a child and had an odd obsession with like infectious diseases, and all also Joan of Arc as everyone should be”

• “I was an Alcatraz girl! Growing up in the SF Bay Area of California, I hit Alcatraz as a touristy place both with my Girl Scout troops and with family (taking visiting folks to check it out). I have always been intrigued by true crime, and Alcatraz is like a little library of astonishing true crime.”

• “I WAS A JONBENET RAMSEY GIRL”

• “I’m a Pluto is no longer a planet girl”

• “I was a vesuvius/pompeii girly”

• “I was fixated on King Henry VIII and all his wives”

• “I was definitely fixated on the columbine massacre after reading a rolling stone article about it”

• “I had multiple historical hyper fixations when I was a kid. I obsessed over the Titanic. Then, I went through a phase with Marie Antoinette and a subsequent one with Anastasia and The Romanovs. Then, when I was 13 I went through a phase with Marilyn Monroe.”

• “I was a Victorian England girlie after reading the Lottie Project by Jacqueline Wilson” (THIS!! JACQUELINE WILSON INTRODUCED ME TO SO MANY DARK THINGS)

• “While I definitely became obsessed with Titanic after watching the movie (I wanted to be a redhead and called Rose hah), I was and always will be a Horse Girl”

• “I was a Madeleine McCann boy”

• “My childhood GP was Madeleine McCann’s mum so it’s safe to assume which girlie I was”

As always, you’re all ICONIC. Continue dropping what your tragic obsession was as a kid below!!!

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BOYGENIUS IS BACK

For those of you who don’t know (and I promise I’m not tutting at you) boygenius is a supergroup (imo) made up of Phoebe Bridgers, Julian Baker, and Lucy Dacus. ANYWAY, they’ve been breadcrumbing us that a new album is coming (those leaked photos, and then their appearance on the Coachella lineup), and then I woke up this morning to a surprise drop of three new songs???? And an announcement that their new album is gonna be out on March 31!!?? Hell yeah.

Anyway, if this means anything to you, here you go:

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Today’s mundane poll is brought to you by Sara (who apologises for it being a bit gross)

• Why do we do ANYTHING? (Culture Vulture)

• Same Shit Different Year (The Shit Show)

• ‘People are leaving the game’: Dungeons & Dragons fans revolt against new restrictions (The Guardian)

• Inflation is cooling. Why are egg prices still so hard to crack? (Vox)