☕️ Eager optimists

July 10, 2022 | View Online | Sign Up | Shop

A marijuana leaf in a petri dish, held by human hand

Illustration: Jenny Chang, Photos: Pexels

IN THIS ISSUE

The race for reliable cannabis testing

Brands embrace nihilism

Hannibal Buress answers our Questionnaire

VIBE CHECK

"Of course."—Boris Johnson, when asked on July 6 if he'd still be prime minister on July 7

"Them's the breaks."—Boris Johnson, announcing his resignation as prime minister on July 7

"Peppa Pig is the greatest British import of this decade."—Quentin Tarantino to Empire

SHOWDOWN

—Interviews by Sherry Qin

THE SHORT READ

Brands gone wild

SOPA Images/Getty Images

RadioShack has gotten a lot of media coverage over the last week and a half for a series of eyebrow-raising tweets. They've told Lizzo she's "fine af," claimed to defile an Applebee's, and—most memorably—declared, "If you find a squirter marry her." In an interview with Input, RadioShack's CMO Ábel Czupor declined to share the special formula he's devised for the brand, but it's somehow part of a strategy for reviving the twice-bankrupt company, which is now selling crypto.

Though the century-old electronics store is the latest brand to suddenly become horny on main, it's not the first, nor will it be the last. What the internet has called "shitposting" has somehow become the language of modern capitalism. For the fortunate and unfamiliar, shitposting is adopting the tone of Bart Simpson if he was addicted to the internet: irreverent, nihilistic, and in a way that would confuse his parents. When major corporations or embroiled CEOs like Elon Musk shitpost, it feels like the Monopoly man rebranding himself as a Soundcloud rapper. It's cringey and feels artificial, but it works. Brands are now just like the average internet addict: ironically depressed and performatively horny.

A sexually excited mega-corporation is guaranteed to cause a rubbernecking event on social media. Brands have been horny for a while now; it's a condition that's afflicted companies ranging from streaming services to Hot Pockets. On Twitter, Dave & Buster's called Doja Cat "mommy." And Snickers winked at users who were concerned about the texture of its candy bar, tweeting, "Good news, contrary to what's trending on Twitter...THE VEINS REMAIN!" "Phew," Musk responded, completing the circle of shitposting life. Following RadioShack's lead, Nutter Butter, a brand owned by one of the largest snack companies in the world, recently tweeted "N is for the way you nut at me," complete with a faux Notes app apology follow-up (yes, RadioShack responded).

Regular internet users filled social media with posts and memes that reflected the je ne sais quoi of shitposting. Now the corporations are using it for their own purposes. Brands are as despondent as you are—or at least good at pretending to be.

—Ashwin Rodrigues

TOGETHER WITH FIDELITY

Personalized investing just got simplified

You want the power to invest in what you believe in, and the professional management to help keep your portfolio balanced.

With Fidelity Managed FidFolios^SM, you get both—and then some. All you need to do is pick an investment strategy, and Fidelity builds you a diversified stock portfolio spread across a wide range of companies.

You have the final say on what graces your portfolio¹, and you even receive access to personalized, tax-smart investing strategies² to help you keep more of what you earn.

With a stock portfolio tailored to your goals and index investing created for you, Fidelity Managed FidFolios^SM are ready to get to work with you.

Open an account here.

THE BIG READ

Tech companies are racing to crack the code of marijuana testing

Illustration: Jenny Chang, Photos: Pexels

If you smoke a joint or eat a space cake, marijuana's active ingredient, THC (technical name: Tetrahydrocannabinol), moves directly to your brain where it releases dopamine. You feel chill, happy, and hungry for cool ranch Doritos. Though your cravings subside after a few hours and that sweet 420 feeling fades, THC can linger in your bloodstream for weeks or even longer. That's a problem if you have to take a drug test. Say, for example, you're a pilot required to take semiregular drug tests. Even though you're not high and haven't been for days, a sample of your blood or saliva might tell a different story to your employer, one that says you could be impaired. That's like failing a sobriety test a week after having a few beers at a party.

Even though marijuana is legal in 19 states and Washington, DC, there's no widely accepted way to measure real-time impairment caused by the substance. That's because THC doesn't affect people the same way alcohol and other drugs do. Instead of working its way quickly through the body, THC lingers, rendering standard drug testing regiments—through blood, hair, or urine tests—largely useless and unable to determine when a person last used. Plus, THC hits people differently; frequent users may not feel high despite having large amounts of THC in their blood, but a new smoker might struggle to walk a straight line after taking a hit. Pinpointing impairment to marijuana use is a tricky physiological puzzle that has so far bested researchers. But tech companies are racing to crack the code and, in the process, capitalize on a market potentially worth billions of dollars. A market analysis estimates the global drug testing market will be worth about $10.7 billion by 2030. Marijuana testing leads the market.

That's a hefty incentive for tech companies and a sizable enough profit to make navigating all the nuances of THC testing worth it. There's no consensus on what type of tech is best, and there's no agreement that any options really work. That's cleared a path for creative approaches to the problem. There are breathalyzers in development that would analyze samples for teeny tiny bits of THC that are only present soon after someone consumes. Then there are cognitive tests that use computers or phones to ask what should be easy questions. They try to see if a slower response time means someone is too high to work or drive. The developments are highly scrutinized by legal experts wary of smartphones and breathalyzers promising to solve the evasive problem. The tech will need to survive court challenges to become standard-bearers in the way that a .08 blood alcohol level has. Some wonder if Big Tech can ever live up to its promises of solving the drug testing issue.

The race for reliable tech is playing out against a larger cultural shift on marijuana, legalization, and decriminalization. Fears of reefer madness are fading and the stigma around marijuana use is dissipating. But employers, especially those with workers who operate heavy machinery or drive, are stuck between a rock and a hard place; quit drug testing and risk a lawsuit following a workplace accident or hikes in insurance costs, or keep traditional drug testing, and potentially be sued for wrongful termination by an employee who tests positive for being impaired at work. It's also made the landscape chaotic for employees who wonder if it's okay to smoke a bowl on the weekend or if they'll lose their jobs after a random drug test days later. Continue reading this story by Amanda Hoover.

Q&A

Brew Questionnaire with Hannibal Buress

Marcus Price

Hannibal Buress is a stand-up comedian from Chicago. He's also a television writer and actor with credits including Saturday Night Live, The Eric Andre Show, Broad City, and many others. Currently, he's producing and performing music as Eshu Tune. His first EP dropped in April, and it's better—and less joke-centric—than you might think. Buress is so focused on his music right now, he won't even answer our question about laughter. We're glad to have him anyway.

What's the best advice you ever received?
We all die. Don't take it so seriously.

What's the most embarrassing song you'll admit to liking publicly?
"CMDGT" by Eshu Tune.

What fictional person do you wish were real?
God.

What real person do you wish were fictional?
Larry Bird.

How would you explain TikTok to your great-grandparents?
A record player but it keeps skipping and it's a video and it's Chinese face-scanning software.

What always makes you laugh?
[Buress declined to answer this question. Instead, we recommend this throwback bit, "Hannibal Buress Didn't Cry Watching the Movie 'Up,'" which makes us laugh.]

If you were given a billboard in Times Square, what would you put on it?
Eventbrite listings used to pull people into a religion but they're disguised as networking events.

—Interview by Ashwin Rodrigues

BREW'S BEST

Sidekick's Travel Guide just dropped. Check out the best products available for your next trip. [Sidekick]

Working for yourself is not necessarily better than working for someone else if it means cobbling together a bunch of unrelated and unpredictable sources of income. [Money with Katie]

As a recession looms, some brands are actually increasing their influencer marketing budgets. [Marketing Brew]

Made in the USA: As more companies bring manufacturing stateside, here's what they can and can't say about being American-made. [Retail Brew]

Tai Verdes, who rose to fame on TikTok in 2020, talks to the Brew about songwriting, the myth of overnight success, and playing the long game. [Business Casual]

More tech: As we speak (er, type), drones are delivering groceries and brain chips are being developed. Emerging Tech Brew is the free newsletter to keep you informed on all of this tech and more. Subscribe for free.

THE END

✢ A Note From Fidelity

Investing involves risk, including risk of loss.

Morning Brew and Fidelity are independent entities and are not legally affiliated.

¹You may exclude up to five individual stocks or two industries in your account.

²Tax-smart (i.e., tax-sensitive) investing techniques, including tax-loss harvesting, are applied in managing certain taxable accounts on a limited basis, at the discretion of the portfolio manager, primarily with respect to determining when assets in a client's account should be bought or sold. Assets contributed may be sold for a taxable gain or loss at any time. There are no guarantees as to the effectiveness of the tax-smart investing techniques applied in serving to reduce or minimize a client's overall tax liabilities, or as to the tax results that may be generated by a given transaction.

Fidelity Managed FidFolios℠ provides discretionary investment management for a fee. Advisory services offered by Fidelity Personal and Workplace Advisors LLC (FPWA), a registered investment adviser. Brokerage services provided by Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC (FBS), and custodial and related services provided by National Financial Services LLC (NFS), each a member NYSE and SIPC. FPWA, FBS, and NFS are Fidelity Investments companies.

Written by Rohan Anthony, Stassa Edwards, Amanda Hoover, Ashwin Rodrigues, and Sherry Qin

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here

WANT MORE BREW?

Industry news, with a sense of humor →

CFO Brew: your go-to source for global finance insights
Emerging Tech Brew: AI, crypto, space, autonomous vehicles, and more
Future Social: the Brew's take on the world of social media
HR Brew: analysis of the employee-employer relationship
IT Brew: moving business forward; innovation analysis for the CTO, CIO & every IT pro in-between
Marketing Brew: the buzziest happenings in marketing and advertising
Retail Brew: retail trends from DTC to "buy now, pay later"

Tips for smarter living →

Money Scoop: your personal finance upgrade
Money With Katie: manifest your financial freedom
Sidekick: lifestyle recs from every corner of the internet

Podcasts → Business Casual, Founder's Journal, Imposters, and The Money with Katie Show

YouTube

Accelerate Your Career with our Courses →

Business Essentials Accelerator: Become a better communicator, operator, and innovator.
Leadership Accelerator: Grow your team, grow yourself, grow your impact.
Business Analytics Accelerator: Understand the business of numbers and make better decisions with data.

ADVERTISE // CAREERS // SHOP // FAQ

Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here.
View our privacy policy here.

Copyright © 2022 Morning Brew. All rights reserved.
22 W 19th St, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10011

The Morning: The G.O.P.’s ‘wildest dream’

View in browser|nytimes.com

July 10, 2022

By Ian Prasad Philbrick

Good morning. A pro-Trump congresswoman's victory in a historically Democratic region of Texas helps explain why Latino voters are shifting rightward.

Representative Mayra Flores at the Capitol after being sworn in last month.Shuran Huang for The New York Times

The G.O.P.'s 'wildest dream'

Latino voters have recently shifted toward the Republican Party. Most still vote for Democrats, but the margin has shrunk.

One sign of the shift is in Texas' majority-Latino 34th Congressional District, which recently elected Mayra Flores, a conservative Republican, to serve out the remaining term of a Democrat who resigned in March. To put Flores's election in context of the larger shift, today's newsletter talks with Jennifer Medina, a Times reporter who writes about national politics and profiled Flores this week.

Ian: How did you meet Flores?

Jennifer: I met her almost a year and a half ago when I went to the Rio Grande Valley, in South Texas, to try to understand why Latino voters there swung toward Donald Trump in 2020. I came across a whole group of women who drove a lot of the change. They'd organized "Trump Trains" and done Hispanic outreach for the Republican Party. A lot of them, including Flores, were married to Border Patrol agents and used that as the source of their energy and support for Trump.

Flores won her special election last month pretty easily, despite being a first-time candidate running in a historically Democratic district. She seems to symbolize Republican hopes that Latinos will increasingly support the party. How was she received in Washington?

She was treated like a rock star. After her swearing-in, she did a press conference with Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans. The placard on the lectern said "Historic." Republicans have been criticized for being anti-immigrant, obviously, and here's a woman who not only is an immigrant but who worked in the fields alongside her parents as a farmworker.

Flores has described herself as Democrats' worst nightmare, but she was also Republicans' wildest dream. She's the first Mexican-born woman in Congress, and the Republican Party completely embraced her.

Flores has voiced conspiratorial views, suggesting that the Jan. 6 attack was a "setup." You repeatedly asked her whether President Biden won the 2020 election, and she kept responding that he was "the worst president." Was that awkward?

I don't think it was a surprise to her that I asked. I think she'd been asked that question before, knew what she wanted to say and stuck to the script. I gave her multiple opportunities to clarify. I actually said, "I'm not trying to be cute, I'm really trying to understand." She said, "That's my statement."

Flores told you she voted for Barack Obama in 2008, but grew disillusioned with Democrats and enthusiastically backed Trump. Have voters in her district similarly shifted?

Flores won a low-turnout election, so we're talking about a smallish slice of voters. But, almost by definition, she received support from people who voted Democrat in the past.

I met a retired couple who, unlike many of her most ardent supporters, were devoted Catholics, not evangelicals. They were warm and inviting, and I sat on their couch for an hour listening to their political trajectory. They had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and considered themselves moderates. But the husband, especially, had started to feel like undocumented immigrants were getting welfare benefits that they shouldn't, and that Democrats were increasingly hostile to anybody who was anti-abortion. They voted for Trump in 2020 and felt like Flores represented what they wanted to see: somebody fed up with Democrats and willing to criticize them loudly.

You describe Flores's district, which borders Mexico, as "politically liberal yet culturally conservative." What does that mean?

It's a place where law enforcement is revered. For a lot of people, law enforcement — not only the police, but also the Border Patrol and sheriffs — is the best path to the middle class. Churches are crowded on Sundays. A lot of small evangelical churches have opened up and are growing. You see American flags on the backs of cars or in front of houses and businesses.

People are connected to their families. They get together often. Many residents see those ideals reflected more in the Republican Party than in the Democratic Party. Flores's slogan — "God, family, country" — spoke to a lot of voters.

Immigration seems like a complex issue there. Flores is an immigrant who campaigned on border security, and many of her voters have family who at some point crossed the border.

A lot of them trace their ancestry back to Mexico. The border is in their everyday lives. To hear Flores tell it, the border is in disarray, though not everybody in her district thinks that way. People who support her and support Trump make a big distinction between legal and illegal immigration. They say a version of, "Nobody who's coming in now is doing it the right way. People should get in line and do it the way we did it."

They also couch their support for closing the border or putting up a border wall in terms of human trafficking, drugs and gangs. There's a sense that Mexico and the border are more dangerous now. But a lot of people I talked to, including Republicans, have empathy for immigrants. Even if they despise current policy, there's a notion of "We want to help them."

Latino voters' rightward shift isn't just a South Texas phenomenon. What other factors play a role nationally?

This is the question that I'm constantly trying to figure out. You can't overgeneralize. What's true about Mexican Americans in the Rio Grande Valley may not be true about Latino voters in New Mexico, South Florida, Virginia or Pennsylvania. In Florida, there's anti-socialism sentiment. The border is an issue elsewhere.

But I think a lot of it has to do with religion. A growing segment of Hispanic evangelicals feels much more tied to the evangelical movement than to any sort of Latino political identity.

More about Jennifer: She joined The Times 20 years ago as an intern after graduating from the University of Southern California. She has covered education, immigration and the 2020 election. She lives in Los Angeles and considers herself a committed Zumba and hip-hop dancer.

NEWS

The Latest

Demonstrators at the Sri Lankan presidential palace on Friday.Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters

The president of Sri Lanka agreed to resign hours after protesters stormed his palace.
The U.S. is pursuing a plan to allow sales of Russian oil, but at a steep discount, after analysts projected that a full ban could send gas prices to $7 a gallon.
The war in Ukraine has turned into a slow and bloody battle of inches. Vladimir Putin is betting he can outlast an impatient West.
Elena Rybakina, a 23-year-old Russia native who competes for Kazakhstan, won her first Wimbledon title.

FROM OPINION

Demoralized Democrats need something to vote for. Why not a plan to reform — not pack — the Supreme Court? Ezra Klein asks.
"I am meant to rule the jungle": Maureen Dowd profiles Eric Adams, New York City's mayor.
Reduced abortion access doesn't have to mean higher maternal mortality, David Albert Jones says.
Chief Justice John Roberts should resign, Pamela Paul argues.

The Sunday question: Should the F.D.A. target nicotine?

Lowering cigarettes' nicotine content will make them less addictive and will save lives, Sarah Milov argues in The Times. Reason's Jacob Sullum thinks the agency's proposed rules will create an incentive to smoke more and drive up sales of black-market cigarettes.

MORNING READS

Casey Huang thrift shopping in Brooklyn last year.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times

Secondhand: "The golden age of thrifting is over": It's becoming harder to find gems.

Sunday routine: The actor Dan Perlman stops by a few comedy clubs.

Vows: In 2015, she suffered a brain injury on Whistler Mountain. In May, she was married there.

Advice from Wirecutter: Tableware for outdoor eating.

A Times classic: Looking back on "Sex, Lies and Videotape."

BOOKS

Rebecca Clarke

By the Book: Erika L. Sánchez wishes more authors would write about money.

Our editors' picks: Harrowing new works of nonfiction are among this week's recommendations.

Times best sellers: "Hattie Harmony: Worry Detective," written by Elizabeth Olsen and Robbie Arnett and illustrated by Marissa Valdez, debuts at No. 1 on our children's picture book list. See all our lists.

The Book Review podcast: Alice Elliott Dark discusses her new novel and Katherine Chen talks about fictionalizing Joan of Arc.

THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE

Concept by Pablo Delcan. Photo illustration by Bobby Doherty for The New York Times

On the cover: Our bodies contain an untold number of synchronized biological clocks. Can we take control of them?

Recommendation: Talk to the dead.

Liquid natural gas: How one restaurateur transformed America's energy industry.

Eat: A good biscuit is a miracle. These are savory, with kimchi and Cheddar.

Read the full issue.

THE WEEK AHEAD

What to Watch For

The Jan. 6 committee will hold its next hearing on Tuesday. It will focus on the ties between Trump and militias that helped orchestrate the Capitol attack.
Biden will make his first trip to the Middle East as president this week, stopping in Israel and the West Bank before heading to Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. government will release data on consumer prices on Wednesday. Experts expect it to show that inflation continues to accelerate.
Brittney Griner will return to Russian court on Thursday.
Emmy nominations will be announced on Tuesday.
Manhattanhenge, when the sunset aligns with Manhattan's street grid, is tomorrow.

What to Cook This Week

Clockwise, Gentl and Hyers for The New York Times; David Malosh for The New York Times; Ryan Liebe for The New York Times; David Malosh for The New York Times

Priya Krishna, writing the Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter this week, has compiled a list of easy, delicious meals to make with your leftovers. There's creamy pasta with ricotta and herbs, great for when your herbs won't keep fresh for much longer, and a loaded baked frittata to soak up any and all foods lingering in the fridge. As Priya writes: "When in doubt, frittata it out!"