How to Properly Take a Hot Bath

does the NYT hate joy?

Programming notes: I’m at the Texas Book Festival in Austin later today. Details here.

From now on please refer to me as: Tour guide, seductress, adventurer.

Do the Germans have a word for knowing you’re being trolled and allowing yourself to be trolled anyway. Because lately when I read the New York Times, I think we need one.

The day before Halloween and five days before a very stressful election they had spent weeks telling us would likely result in authoritarianism (no argument there) the Times decided to investigate all the bad things sugar does to our bodies. I mean, read the goddamn room, NYT. It’s like telling a person dying of thirst, Coke is not their best option. Please save this sh*t until January when I am prepared to give up joy.

Then, earlier this week, just days after the country elected a convicted felon and a man found liable for sexual abuse as president, as well as a man who wants to delegitimize “childless cat ladies” as vice president, they opted to do a feature on the “unspoken grief” of not becoming a grandparent (I think a lot of people would take issue with the “unspoken” aspect). Is JD Vance secretly assigning stories over there? Skip the article for the comments here.

AND THEN THEY CAME AFTER HOT BATHS.

It is a dumb article. I’m not linking to it. Don’t bother reading it. The sum total of knowledge contained therein is that hot water dries the skin. Which, if you are a person who takes your hot baths straight, you either deserve dry skin or you don’t care.

I am a born bath taker. I have been taking regular hot baths since I was six and allowed to have one on my own. Every one of my childhood books is waffled at the bottom from reading in the tub. There is an environmental argument against baths, which I personally counter with the fact I don’t drive or own a car. I walk or bike or take public transportation. While I am not a vegetarian, I rarely eat meat (largely because I don’t cook). I live on the top floor of an apartment building and regularly keep the heat off during the winter. (NYC is weirdly green). Also, I learned the other day that if you type -AI after a search term it removes AI results! A 100-word email using AI is estimated to use one bottle of water (!!) in order to cool the AI servers. So now I do that. Also, importantly, baths bring me joy.

Here is how to properly take a hot bath (-AI):