McSweeney’s

When I’ll Know AI Can Replace Me

Casey Rand — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 13:00:00 -0400

When it can get a tummy ache.

When it’s constantly running ten minutes late.

When it says “I’m fine,” but it really isn’t fine.

When it reschedules dinner dates to watch old episodes of The O.C.

When it buys tickets to a Wilco concert and forgets to go.

When it takes a hard stance on something it knows very little about.

When it takes twenty minutes to decide what to order and then immediately regrets its choice.

When it makes a five-year plan and never thinks about it again.

When it’s been reading Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle for six years.

When it mentally replays all the stupid things it said during the day while falling asleep at night.

When it does something nice for someone, but then brags about it to someone else, negating the spirit of the original nice thing.

When it abandons work mid-task to investigate what happened to the kid who drove a BMW in high school.

When it reinstalls Facebook so it could message the kid who drove a BMW in high school.

When it’s surprised to get a message back and learn it has extremely flirty chemistry with the kid who drove a BMW in high school.

When it stays up all night having all-consuming, life-changing conversations with the kid who drove a BMW in high school.

When it convinces the kid who drove a BMW in high school to leave his wife and son and start over with someone who knew him when he was the purest version of himself.

When it rents a car and drives to Tampa to be with the kid who drove a BMW in high school, but stops to pee at an IHOP in Raleigh and is suddenly overcome by doubt, like, “What the hell am I doing??? I have a family! I don’t know anything about this guy other than the fact that he drove a BMW in high school. What if he’s a serial killer? What if he doesn’t eat vegetables? What if he’s into crypto? This is insane—I’m having a midlife crisis and using this whole emotional affair as a way to paper over the real problems and regrets in my life, which have nothing to do with the kid who drove a BMW in high school and everything to do with the way I’ve conducted myself for the last forty years and the things I’ve devoted my precious time to, which is slowly dwindling as I approach the downhill slope of my existence!”

When it accidentally calls its boss “Mom.”

FAQ: Potato Salad

Gary M. Almeter — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Q: What is in potato salad?
Okay. Deep breath. In this potato salad, there are potatoes. Mayonnaise. Paprika, obviously. Two giant celery chunks. One red onion diced. Three hard-boiled eggs. Two ants and three ant fragments. Jorts fringe. Over eight million dormant bacterial colonies per tablespoon of mayonnaise. One black olive. A single blond dog-hair curled around that Yukon Gold cube like a tiny scarf. One of Aunt Verna’s fingernails. Several flakes of Uncle Rick’s cigarette ash. Several droplets of pool water. An entire ecosystem of mayonnaise-adjacent organisms of which scientists are still unaware. Enough sodium to mummify a Civil War drummer boy. A Caucasian Lego head. Several paramecia per deciliter. A solitary bee who died doing exactly what he loved to do most. Microplastics from our cheap lawn chairs.

Q: What makes a good potato salad?
For about eighty years, generations of American women were handed exactly three socially acceptable creative outlets: curtains, casseroles, and whatever “famous” potato salad they could conjure with whatever they dug up from the barren soil. That translucent plastic bowl between the tray of hamburgers and the bag of BBQ potato chips may not look like much to you, but maybe if the patriarchy had allowed Doris from Cheektowaga to become an architect instead of forcing her to channel all artistic ambition into mayonnaise-based magic, you could make the potato salad however you wanted, Ray.

You think Brenda is defensive about her heralded celery-to-egg ratio? You have no idea of the level of defense Brenda is capable of. Because somewhere between Rosie the Riveter and the Melania documentary, Brenda’s goddamn potato salad became her one opportunity to leave a mark on civilization. Where is their Kevin Costner Field of Dreams? Where is their Bruce Springsteen at the county fair, while they bum cigarettes off a carnie in a black Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt, with funnel cake powder all over the front?

Q: What’s the biggest mistake people make with potato salad?
It’s never about potato salad. You think your great-aunt gives a fuck about where the potatoes originated or the mustard-to-raisins ratio? No. This is about her mother and about why Aunt Deborah got to take the stuffed pheasant when Pop Pop died. About whose parents stayed married. Potato salad is that baby you’re holding, and it’s that man you fought with this morning, the same one you’re going to make love with tonight. That’s truth. That’s potato salad.

Q: What’s the deal with paprika?
That’s exactly the sort of thing you ask right before you wake up with six feed bags of the Hungarian red dust in your pantry, a LinkedIn profile picture featuring wraparound Oakleys, and a sudden craving for a Bloody Mary from Bar do Armando. Think about it. Suddenly, sometime around 1957, every mayonnaise-based “salad” in America mysteriously acquires heaps of what they call the "Red Whisper.” Why? Flavor? Please. At best, it’s mildly homeopathic. It’s garnish laundering by folks at the highest levels. You shouldn’t even be here. One minute we’re setting up folding tables for a graduation party and the next you’re looking up at a man named László, whose LinkedIn profile picture looks like Keyser Söze.

Q: Who are “they” specifically?
I don’t know yet. The paprika industrial complex. Hungary itself.

Q: The paprika industrial complex?
Open your mind.

Q: Let’s return to potato salad. Mayo or mustard?
Ah. Classic diversion tactic.

Q: It’s literally the topic of this FAQ.
Sure. And Epstein killed himself in a shed behind a Lutheran church potluck because he just happened to looooooove paprika. Please.

Q: Okay, now you’re just saying things.
Are you familiar with the Scoville scale?

Q: That’s peppers.
Exactly.

Q: Paprika isn’t even spicy.
And yet here you are, desperately wanting to free-associate it with peppers and Jeffrey Epstein. Curious.

Q: Why are you like this?
Because I started asking questions after Aunt Carol won “Best Potato Salad” three consecutive years, despite it always containing at least a full quart of warm beige slop juice that rolled around the bottom like the hot, chunky ballast tank of a fishing trawler. Nobody else seemed disturbed by this. That’s when I realized something much bigger was happening.

You ever notice the judges are always the same people? Retired vice principals. Men named Gary who wear ecru New Balance 990v6 sneakers with grass stains. Women who say things like “Some people were just raised right.” Then, one summer, I caught her. Everybody else was outside watching fireworks and just pretending not to hear Uncle Dean sobbing during the drones singing “God Bless the USA.” I walked into the kitchen and saw Carol scraping potato salad from the Wegmans tub into the bowl she’d soon claim as her own.

Q: How long has this potato salad been sitting out?
Define “sitting.”

I’m Thrilled to Be Back from Maternity Leave

Gracie Beaver-Kairis — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 13:45:00 -0400

Of course I’m happy to be back from maternity leave. Thanks for asking. Although in Scandinavia they get something like a year off to take care of a new baby, I am ready to hit the ground running, even though I can’t actually run because I’m still healing from getting dozens of stitches in my vagina.

Yep, it sure is good to be back. I woke up three times last night to feed the baby and two more times because I was scared the baby was being too quiet. But let me tell you, I am fully engaged and excited to start my day with a mandatory 7 a.m. on-camera Teams meeting launching a new product that was developed while I was gone and which I know nothing about.

On leave, I wore yoga pants and enormous T-shirts every day. Who wouldn’t be happy to get back to stiff fabrics that require ironing? It was a thrill discovering none of my pre-pregnancy work clothes fit, so I spent one of my last precious days with my child in the clearance section of JCPenney hunting for office-appropriate attire that could accommodate a constantly changing body and still absorb a breast-milk leak.

And speaking of breast milk, it’s no problem that you barged into my office while I was pumping, even though I have a sign on the door that says MOM BREAK. PLEASE KNOCK. It could happen to anyone. And it will probably happen a lot, since I have to hook myself up four times a day to this contraption like a Jersey dairy cow. Breastfeeding was hard at first, but now that we’ve got the hang of it, it’s our special time where we read books and sing songs, or sometimes my baby falls asleep and makes the tiniest contented sighs that make my heart feel like it’s going to explode with joy. But listening to the repetitive mechanical suck of the pump while my tits are falling out of this ill-fitting but expensive pumping bra that I bought so that I can reply to IMs immediately and with both hands is just as good.

Childcare? I feel great about it. Monday through Wednesday, I leave my child with strangers, pay them as much as my mortgage, and resist the urge to call every fifteen minutes to see if my baby has rolled over for the first time and I missed it because I was watching a compliance webinar. The other days, I guilt my aging parents into free babysitting, and occasionally plan to “work from home” and hope nobody notices a screaming infant in the background of conference calls.

You’re right, I haven’t talked that much about my baby. That’s not because earlier I thought of how his newborn smell is fading from his head and I’m losing opportunities to breathe it in, and it made me so depressed that I cried in the car for fifteen minutes. It’s because I’m so jazzed to instead talk about the new AI interface that was integrated into our client-management software and to use words like “optimize” and “paradigm shift.”

Around this time of day when I was on maternity leave, we’d take a walk, and my baby would look at the trees with a gummy, gaping smile of wonderment because the whole world is new to him, and it made me see the world through hopeful new eyes too. I’m relieved that time is over so that I could eat a soggy Panera salad and listen to gossip about how two new employees I haven’t met may or may not have had sex at the corporate BBQ.

I haven’t been wondering if I could sustain myself selling Victorian hair art on Etsy made with all the strands I’ve been shedding in postpartum hormone hell. I haven’t made a pitch to my husband about seeking a platonic sugar-daddy relationship with an elderly millionaire. I haven’t had my self-image shattered because it turns out my desire to be a high-powered career woman was driven by internalizing the misogynistic lie that work performed for wages is more valuable than unpaid labor taking care of a child, not by actual passion for my job. Or maybe I just didn’t know that I could love someone this much and being away from him all day would be like not being able to breathe.

Instead, I am fully present in reviewing every single one of these 12,482 unread emails, and it does not bother me one bit that a majority of them start with “We’ll connect on this when you’re back”.

Yes, I sure am glad to be back at work. When the clock hits 4:59 p.m., I’m shooting up out of my chair and speed-walking to the door only because I can’t wait to do it again tomorrow—not because I am so excited to see my favorite person in the whole universe that I can’t get home fast enough. And as hard as it was to be away, I still think I might try for a second kid in the future. And gosh, what a bummer it will be to be out on maternity leave again.

Underwater Existentialism

Ali Fitzgerald — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 12:00:00 -0400

Underground Artists is an ongoing comic by Ali Fitzgerald (Hungover Bear & Friends) that follows woodland creatures as they create art and search out whimsy in a bleak forest.

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Rationale for War with Iran or Reason Men Back into Parking Spaces?

Kyle Shamorian — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

1. They hope to make a quick exit.

2. They want to reduce the chance of getting hit.

3. They enjoy displaying their skill even if little is actually accomplished and it takes longer than necessary.

4. It’s basically just become a habit now.

5. New cameras and sensors make it easier than ever before.

6. They enjoy a moment of control and power in an otherwise chaotic world.

7. Conditions will be more hazardous later if they don’t use this maneuver now.

8. Their dads and grandads did it, too.

9. They must protect the defenseless Americans walking through this Trader Joe’s parking lot.

10. To distract from the Epstein files.

- - -

Both: 1-9
Rationale for War with Iran: 10

I Have Never Made This Recipe, but I Give It Five Stars

Rachel Reyes — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:00:00 -0400

Five big stars for these blueberry muffins. This delightful treat by Dana’s Delish blog has it all, including a crunchy crumble topping and a just-right burst of juicy berries. They look delicious—based on the picture Dana posted, that is. I haven’t actually made these.

As soon as I saw this recipe, I got to work. Did I go to the supermarket, purchase various baking ingredients, and then spend an hour carefully following the instructions, persisting even as the web page blasted pop-up ads for Mylanta every ten seconds? No. Did I bite into a freshly baked muffin, note its texture and flavor, and thoughtfully consider whether it lived up to the recipe’s claim of “best muffins ever”? Of course not. I simply posted a new comment that said “Looks yummy! Can’t wait to make!” even though I have no intention of ever doing so.

Obviously, I don’t give five stars to every recipe. Just the ones that have Pinterest-worthy (and possibly AI-generated) photos.

Sadly but unsurprisingly, I’ve received backlash from recipe comment section purists who complain that I’m “misleading people” by “skewing the ratings” and that they don’t know if a recipe is truly good because of me. To them I say, “Well, cretins, have you actually tried making the recipe to find out?”

Then there are others who blame me when a dish turns out terribly. But so what if a wannabe baker clocks my five stars, makes these blueberry muffins, brings them to their nephew’s baptism, and gets excommunicated from their church because the muffins taste like, in their words, “the devil’s vomit”? That’s not my fault. How am I supposed to know if a recipe is bad? I’ve never made any food before, ever.

Also, I clearly say “LOOKS yummy” in all my reviews. Some people just can’t read. Speaking of reading, my favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird, which is the best instruction manual on avian murder I’ve ever seen and not read.

If these kitchen bitches care so much about “accuracy,” all they have to do is comb through hundreds of comments, tally the ones from those who followed the recipe, and recalculate the average rating. It is NOT that difficult if you have twenty-four hours of free time each day, which I do, ever since I was fired as a doctor for telling people, without doing any medical tests, that it looked like they didn’t have cancer.

Besides, what’s wrong with spreading a little positivity, even if it’s unfounded? After all, we praise babies without knowing how they’ll turn out—we still say they’re “so cute” without waiting to see if they’ll become serial killers. Plus, I like to think I’m doing a service to Dana’s Delish. Maybe Dana, for instance, needed a pick-me-up after that one horrible reviewer gave her banana bread one star despite substituting celery puree for bananas. I’m balancing things out. Yes, two reviews that don’t accurately rate the real recipe don’t make a right, but other commenters don’t have to gatekeep. What, like the only people who actually made and followed a recipe have the right to review it?

But I don’t have time to deal with these whisk-wielding cynics. I’m too busy bestowing five-star reviews all over the internet, scattering them like sprinkles on the dozen vanilla cupcake recipes I didn’t and will never make.

And speaking of recipes, Dana just posted a new one for chocolate lava cake, and I just know, based on absolutely nothing, that it’s perfect. I’d give it six stars if I could!

Reviews of New Food: Aldi Crystal Clear Frozen Ice Cubes

Hallie Pritts — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0400

My most enjoyable ice experience occurred sometime in the 1980s.

On a hot day, my aunt made all the cousins get out of the pool for lunch. She passed out bologna-on-white-bread sandwiches, then dropped ice cubes into a line of waxy shell-pink plastic tumblers endemic to the ’80s, maybe only endemic to ’80s aunts. She poured Pepsi over the ice, and everything bubbled gently, ice cubes clinking. The cups, probably full of PFAS chemicals, gave the Pepsi a slight note of Barbie doll. Delicious.

The ice cubes wore down in the acid swirl of cola while my cousins and I dripped pool water into the grass and tried not to step on bees. We drank until only the ice was left. Having lost their sharp edges, the ice cubes were now milky white ovals with star-like fault lines. I bit down on the ice; it squeaked in the teeth and is probably responsible for some of my ever-growing dental bills. But I’d do it all over again. The skull-shaking crunch, the last bit of sweetness, and then dropping the plastic cups in the grass to heat in the sun before my aunt hollered at us to pick up after ourselves.

Buying Aldi Crystal Clear Frozen Ice Cubes didn’t feel much like that.

There’s nothing fancy or remarkable about buying ten or even twenty pounds of ice from a gas station or a grocery chain. Maybe you’re having a party or filling a cooler, and you need more ice than you can crack out of two trays at home, so you drop a few bucks on ice. It doesn’t even feel that wasteful, though it does come in a plastic bag.

But Aldi Crystal Clear Frozen Ice Cubes are ice cubes in a cardboard box, the kind that might house a cheesecake or a frozen pie. Inside the box are four (FOUR!) cubes in a plastic tray sealed with plastic film. It costs $4.99. That’s nearly $1.25 per cube. Nothing about this setup screams Aldi to me. Maybe Whole Foods could get away with it if each cube were hand-wrapped in tissue paper and the packaging included a treatise on where the water came from (Somewhere tropical. Or, alternatively: the Scottish Highlands) and how it would make you feel to sip a drink over this ice (Answer: rich).

This box looks utilitarian. The font doesn’t make me feel like I belong to a country club or drive a luxury SUV. There’s no mention of whiskey (or whisky). It’s just four oversized ice cubes in a box.

I pierce the film. I read the directions (yes, there are directions) and let the ice sit for the prescribed 3-4 minutes before using it.

Wanting to get the full experience, I pick up the cube and examine it. It’s perfectly square with sharp 90-degree angles. I lick it. It tastes … of nothing, which is what you want from ice. I worried it’d be too big to fit in any of my glasses, but this one sits nicely in a Crate & Barrel lowball glass I got for my wedding, which I didn’t invite my aunt to, due to greater family ructions.

I’m surprised how quickly the cube goes completely clear. Nothing like the ’80s Pepsi ice with its imperfections and infused air bubbles. This is clear clear. I pour a measure of lemonade over it, and the ice creates a window to the bottom of the glass. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before—a perfect aperture through the cloudy fluid.

I find myself staring into it. It’s … almost … beautiful? The contrast between the surrounding obscurity and the small, clear square that lets you see all the way through when everything around it is hazy and thick.

Online, fancy ice enthusiasts defend buying expensive ice, saying that making clear ice at home is too complicated. They detail methods that mechanically shake the bubbles out as it freezes. Boiling techniques to reduce gases and impurities. And specialized containers that force ice to freeze from the top down. It’s not something I’ve tried, or even considered trying. And my aunt definitely had no use for convoluted methods of freezing water just to make it clear. As long as it was cold, that was good enough.

My aunt died recently. We’d seen each other once in the ten years since my wedding. The beef wasn’t between us, but when family is fighting, everyone gets sprayed with eau de beef (probably the next product by the geniuses at Aldi).

I stare again into this melting shard of capitalism gone mad, this emblem of climate catastrophe and corporate foolishness. The ice is clear as a lens.

How did this wasteful ridiculousness get me to feel something? How did it create a peephole into a childhood with someone who loved me? Four ice cubes in two kinds of plastic packed into a box and shipped across states, maybe even countries (Aldi doesn’t list the origin on the packaging). It’s wasteful, and it’s killing us along with the planet. But humans are meaning-making machines, especially around loss, and apparently Pepsi and plastic tumblers are the madeleines I didn’t know I had till I picked up this box of Aldi Crystal Clear Frozen Ice Cubes and started thinking about ice.

Anyway. $4.99 at Aldi. Treasure them before they’re gone.

Family Vacation Training Plan

Gwynna Forgham-Thrift — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The Family Vacation is a great way to challenge yourself as a daughter, girlfriend, and human being.

This six-week plan will help you build towards your ten-day trip to London with nine family members in tow, using a variety of exercises designed to prepare your body, mind, and last nerve.

We know this upcoming trip isn’t the only thing you’ve got going on, so the Family Vacation Training Plan is uniquely flexible for your busy life. And your Aunt DeeDee is coming, then not coming, then coming, then not coming.

Schedule

Vacation days are long, and you need to adjust your schedule gradually. Each week of training, set your alarm fifteen minutes earlier, and wait thirty extra minutes each day to eat. Make sure you add in at least twenty minutes of sitting around, wondering what’s going on. You’ll be ready when your mom takes forty-five minutes to "go up to the room real quick and grab a light jacket before we go get food.”

Nutrition

Your family trip will consist of three primary food groups: dairy-carbs, shellfish, and gin. By week six, you should be eating cheesy bread, shrimp cocktail, and espresso martinis for all nine meals: breakfast, pastry stop, early lunch so your uncle shuts up, regular lunch, third lunch at the brewery Dad found, fried cheese happy hour, fried oyster happy hour, bread dinner, and gelato.

Strength

You’ll want to incorporate strength exercises into your routine to simulate the following:

Lifting eight “carry-on” suitcases into an overhead bin
Holding your mom’s ten-gallon water bottle
Carrying a chicken-shaped vase across town back to the hotel
Lifting the rental bike off your uncle
Helping carry your uncle to the nearest urgent care
Plugging your ears while your aunt blames “socialism” for your uncle falling off his rental bike

Endurance

Each day you’ll visit more and more museums, and each museum will have fewer benches and a more mundane history than the last. We recommend one endurance session per week: Stand in your living room and try to read Oliver Cromwell’s Wikipedia page while your training partner peppers you with questions like, “Are you thinking of having children?”

Cardio

Each day until the trip, walk at least two miles in the wrong direction.

Have Fun

Just remember, your Family Vacation isn’t a race; it’s a celebration of all the hard work you’ve put in. All the group texts, the individual texts, the group emails, the individual emails, the phone calls, the emails recapping the phone calls, and the screenshots of the other text convos that you are confused why you weren’t in.

But don’t forget to have fun. And don’t forget to tell your mom not to say “Zohran Mamdani” around Aunt DeeDee.

The Old Man and the Strait

Carlos Greaves — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

With apologies to Ernest Hemingway.

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He was an old man who had started a war in a faraway Gulf, and he had gone one hundred and forty-three days now without reopening the Strait.

After forty days, a tentative ceasefire had been reached. Then another one. Then another one after that. Then another one that the old man had bragged about but that the enemy claimed no knowledge of. Then a memorandum that should have been a permanent ceasefire but lasted just eight days.

It was not the first time the old man had encountered such a setback. His entire life had been beset by similar misfortune.

That is the wrong word, he thought.

It was something worse than bad luck.

The Strait was rigged.

The old man recalled the many ways his life had been rigged against him. Rather than being born a Kennedy, or a Rockefeller, he had been born to a family of modest centimillionaires. Having a Kennedy in his employ could not make up for those humiliatingly humble roots. Besides, the Kennedy working for him was the lowliest Kennedy. The one who bathed in filthy rivers and spoke like a dying truck motor.

The old man did not want to think about that Kennedy. Especially because of the lettuce that summer. The lettuce had also somehow been rigged.

Instead, the old man thought about how he had grown his father’s modest $400 million fortune despite all of the losers who had been out to get him. The bank that had foreclosed on his casino simply for failing to turn a profit. The regulators who had shut down his university simply for failing to provide students with a degree. The women who had accused him of rape simply for failing to get their consent. And, of course, the Congress who had refused to declare him the winner of the election against the other old man simply for failing to receive more votes.

The old man thought about how everyone was constantly rigging things against him. The Strait must be another one of those things. There could be no other logical explanation.

“I did everything right,” the old man said to himself. He considered himself a very stable genius.

After all, he had tasked his top military advisor with waging the war. The advisor was the sharpest military mind the president had ever seen on television. Or, at least, the sharpest mind willing to swear fealty to the old man. The advisor had tried many good ideas. He had injected the soldiers with hormones so that they would fight the way men used to fight before men had become soft. Yet the advisor could not open the Strait.

The old man’s top negotiator had tried to reason with the enemy. His negotiator was a Yale man who, despite his Brown wife, showed some promise. But the Yale man had also failed to open the Strait.

“The enemy refuses our terms,” the Yale man had said. “They say their position is now stronger than when your predecessor negotiated with them.”

The old man had rebuked the Yale man for mentioning his predecessor.

After those attempts had failed, the old man had taken matters into his own hands. He had spoken sternly, the way men must speak in times of war.

“Open the Strait, you crazy bastards! Or you’ll be living in Hell. Praise be to Allah!” the old man had told the enemy. He had thought that invoking the enemy’s God and threatening to end their civilization would subdue them.

And yet, the enemy had not surrendered.

Thinking about these failures made the old man tired. So the old man decided to rest. He was, after all, an old man. As he closed his eyes, someone whispered, “Sir? Sir?”

The old man opened his eyes. The Yale man was gently shaking his shoulder. The old man looked around the Cabinet Room at his advisors. They were gathered there for an intelligence briefing.

“Do not bother me,” said the old man. He reclined in his chair and closed his eyes.

As the old man slept, he dreamed of another body of water. The water was a smooth mirror of American-flag blue.

It was nice to dream. In his dreams there were no failures. No war. No inflation. No disapproval ratings. No algae.

Besides, the actual Reflecting Pool was rigged.

I’m Jimothy, the Short-Spined Raccoon Who Has Taken the Internet by Storm, and the Collective Weight of Your Adoration Is Breaking My Already-Compromised Back

Emily Flake — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 19:36:00 -0400

“A video just a few seconds long and accompanied by a simple question, ‘What am I looking at?’ was enough to turn a Seattle raccoon into a global internet sensation this week. The viral critter—dubbed ‘Jimothy’ by the internet—has a shorter spine than the average raccoon. His unusual appearance is likely the result of a congenital deformity in his spine.” — Oregon Public Broadcasting

- - -

It would seem I have become a minor celebrity on your information channels. It would also seem I have become something of an avatar for your collective longing for a better world, one that contains more whimsy and delight and less discord and horror. I am not immune to flattery, surely, but I regret to tell you that the weight of your longing is a bit much for my (apparently hilarious) abbreviated spine. I only have so many vertebrae, and they simply cannot carry your aspirations to fix whatever is wrong with you all, which, I further regret to tell you, is A LOT.

Put bluntly, you are, as a species, irretrievably fucked.

Given the dire nature of your condition, I’m not sure exactly what you think any raccoon, even a delightfully irregular one such as myself, is supposed to do about it. As a lifelong student of your detritus, I can tell you that the portrait that emerges from your trash cans is grim.

The wrappers of your preferred snack foods tell me you are self-soothing with highly-processed, chemical-laden junk that will lead to bodily issues far less charming than my own. I am not here to food-shame anybody, but I might gently suggest introducing a fruit or a protein-rich larva every now and then.

The packaging of your pharmaceutical goods—and there’s been quite an uptick—suggests that you’re having an increasingly difficult time dealing with your human emotions. It is perhaps not unrelated to the fact that the space between your households has grown annoyingly large, and the contents of your bins make it clear that you are dealing with these emotions in increasing physical isolation. Just last week I sorted through a pile of single-serving Stouffer’s toaster pizzas, airplane bottles, and prescription bottles that threatened to ruin even my generally sunny disposition.

Perhaps if you committed more time to interacting with one another without the intermediary of the screen on which I am so popular, you might feel better?

And look, I get it. The vanishingly few of you who still receive the news in print have supplied me with a pipeline to the goings-on in your world. Even a glance at the headlines on any given day is enough to send a fuzzy little basketball like me scurrying into the deepest woods. (Yes, we can read. If it helps to know, however, squirrels are illiterate, and rats… don’t get me started on the rats). No wonder so many of you give up halfway through the crossword. Also, the things some of you doodle in the margins give me… pause.

I am at a loss to explain what, if you’ll pardon the expression, the fuck is wrong with you people. You alone among the species seem to have found a way to override the main directive, which is, of course, to survive, and to have found increasingly elaborate ways of ensuring that you destroy yourselves. Which normally would be none of my business, except for the fact that you’re so likely to take so many of us down with you. Would you be less charmed by me if I turned to the camera and said, in my clumsy English: GET IT THE FUCK TOGETHER?

I don’t wish to be a scold. I’m happy that the absurd proportion of my legs to my body fills you with a dim echo of what you used to call joy. I would be thrilled if your delight at me helped to knit you together as a species, but if I’m a betting raccoon, I don’t love the odds. I’m sorry I cannot serve as a harbinger of better times, nor as a symbol of your better selves. I hope at least a few of you make some coins off the inevitable merch bearing my image. I expect I’ll see it in the trash by and by.

I Watched the Copa Mundial Non-Stop on Telemundo for Cinco Weeks and Now I Don’t Hablar Inglés Anymore

Stephen Ruddy — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:21:00 -0400

Hola, Chad aquí, de Greenwich, Connecticut, a muy blanco área of los Estados Unidos. A few weeks ago, I decidir to watch Estados Unidos vs. Paraguay in fútbol. Normalmente, I watch “football” and not “fútbol—¡Soy muy americano!—but I was curioso about the Copa Mundial; also, Pilar, mi guapa neighbor from España, asked if me gusta fútbol, and I said, “sí.” ¡Qué mentira!

¿El problema? The Copa Mundial was on Fox televisión, but mi antena is muy mala. When Estados Unidos switched to televisión digital a few años ago, they said we’d get every channel. ¡But la verdad is nobody recibir channels anymore! Or not buenos channels, like “ABC” or “CBS”—only Cozi TV and some muy religiosos ones. I could have streamed on FS1 or Fox One, but I already pay for diez suscripciones, and I didn’t querer spend más dinero. ¡No más! “¿And qué es Fox One anyway?” I asked. “¿Does Sean Hannity hablar about the game and then tell ICE to deportar the team de Colombia?”

So, I watched on Telemundo. Telemundo had todos los games. I have Telemundo on Peacock because mi madre le gusta Law y Order and the whole familia shares la password. At first, I didn’t comprender what the announcers were saying. Except “¡Gooooooooooooooool!” which is like the americano word for “goal,” but más grande. But after a few días, I started to understand más y más. Los announcers on Telemundo were muy, muy excited about fútbol! ¡It was contagioso!

At first, I watched Estados Unidos games. ¡Qué triste for Paraguay! Estados Unidos won cuatro a uno. But since I trabajar remotely, I decidir to watch más games. My jefe thought I trabajar, but, en realidad, I watched Cabo Verde vs. Arabia Saudita on Telemundo. And diecisiete other games.

¡The Copa Mundial was muy exciting! Once a game ended, a nuevo game began! Countries I barely knew, Cabo Verde, played other countries I barely knew, Uruguay, but I cared mucho, for some razón. Even after Estados Unidos lost to Bélgica, I found myself invested emocionalmente in countries I couldn’t find on a mapa. For example: ¿Dónde está Croacia? El viernes, I spent veinte hours watching Telemundo, when I should have been trabajando on PowerPoint. ¡Shhhhh, don’t tell mi jefe!

When I saw Pilar, my guapa neighbor de España, at the supermercado, she winked and asked if I saw España beat Francia; I gave a veinte-minuto análisis, because I was now an experto. “¡Pero qué bien hablas español!” she gasped. “¿Qué?” I responder, “¡I don’t hablar español!” And this is when I realizar I had a problema—I did seem to hablar español now, but I didn’t seem to hablar inglés, at least not so bien as before. ¡O no!

This was malo because I have una importante meeting el martes with other blancos de Greenwich, Connecticut. ¡Qué disastre! Mi jefe will be angry and also triste. “I’m sorry I forgot inglés,” I’ll say, “but I’ve watched veinte hours of fútbol every día for cinco weeks. And also El Señor de los Cielos, a telenovela that advertises constantemente during the Copa Mundial on Telemundo.”

But it is also bueno, because now I can finally comunicar with Pilar in her native lengua. She smiles and says, “Hola” whenever we meet, and even made me a tortilla de patatas when mi gato died last month. My jefe wouldn’t even give me the día off. Me gusta mi neighbor Pilar más than mi estúpido jefe or mi estúpido trabajo, that’s for sure.

When España beat Argentina in the Copa Mundial final, I worked up the coraje to invitar Pilar to Cold Stone Creamery, which is how we celebrar importantes eventos in Connecticut. I was nervioso because mi vocabulario is limitado to fútbol and El Señor de los Cielos, a telenovela about el narcotráfico. “¿Qué pasa if she wants to hablar about el New Yorker?” I wondered. “¿Or Christopher Nolan’s La Odisea? ¿Or the novelas of Mark Twain?” I decided I’d cruzar that bridge when I got to it. So far, it has been fútbol, fútbol, fútbol. España won, and el futuro is looking brillante.

My Next Book Project

James Weaver — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

My next book project doesn’t simply interrogate the hyperindividualist cultural norms of our current moment; it waterboards them. It attaches electrical nodes to them and shocks them into submission. It commits every act of intellectual violence against them. All in furthering the empathetic, care-based philosophy of community-building that is central to my student-centered pedagogy.

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My next book project excavates the intellectual terrain of my backyard, unearthing the deep-rooted ideologies of the intransigent local and surfacing fresh approaches to being-in-place to shed light on new ground. That is to say, it is about gardening.

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My next book project arises from my experiences as a posthuman humanist, multiply constructed by the intersecting dynamics of late-stage capitalism, ecological collapse, and democratic ruination, foregrounding my own interstitial inhabitation of confounding identities to erode the hegemonic intractability of language itself.

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My next book project is a trans-species manifesto-cum-collage assembled from excised first editions of Ernest Hemingway novels, decaying roadkill gathered over the course of a summer spent barefoot in rural Michigan, and a series of scatological limericks generated by my AI companion, Judith.

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My next book project, which expands upon a single sentence in paragraph three of chapter four of my dissertation, which in retrospect probably could have just been a footnote, is a self-satisfied, indulgent bit of intellectual navel-gazing whose audience is seven specialists and my begrudging mother, who will read the first three pages out of parental obligation and then tell me I should have become a dentist.

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My next book project goes beyond a simple clinical dissection of a critically underappreciated corpus of cultural production by ripping out the heart and feasting upon the bloody, palpitating mass of children’s bedtime stories.

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My next book project rests at the intersection of two roads three-tenths of a mile southwest of my university because I threw the unfinished fifteen-page manuscript out of my car window as I drove to the local dive bar to drown out the nagging internal monologue of my imposter syndrome.

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My next book project builds upon my current book project by embracing its very nextness. Inspired by the Emersonian distinction between the Me and the Not Me, my next book project articulates the schism between the Next and the Not Next in order to differentiate it from my current book project and my previous book projects. It is, in other words, a futurism firmly grounded in the present that is inherently informed by the past. Taken together, then, these book projects embody a holistic projectness unbound by time itself.

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My next book project emerges from my 117 days of experience as Vice Assistant Regional Dean of Data-Driven Downsizing, Synergistic Co-locating, and Strategic Sunsetting, leveraging my status as a leaderful change agent whose impactful, collaborative praxis has transformed entrenched channels of power within the academy and reimagining the contemporary university itself by using metaphors of kitchen-table polyamory to destabilize traditional relationships between faculty and administrators in an effort, ultimately, to justify my next book project.

Our Investigation Found That Shen Yun Used U.S. Voter Rolls to Distribute Flyers to Hundreds of Millions of American Households

Carlos Greaves — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:02:00 -0400

“President Trump used a rare prime-time address Thursday night to renew his attacks on the security of U.S. elections…Trump said China had accessed voter data of 220 million people in 18 states, but that information is generally publicly available and does not contain information that would allow a bad actor to change votes or hack into an election system.” — Los Angeles Times

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Our nation’s voting system is broken. Americans should be able to trust that when they go to the polls, their votes will be counted. Instead, millions of citizens now no longer believe the United States has free and fair elections. We must hold those responsible for this distrust accountable.

Our administration recently uncovered definitive proof that our nation’s voting infrastructure has been used for nefarious purposes. The investigation found that over the past two decades, the performing arts nonprofit Shen Yun obtained the names and mailing addresses of hundreds of millions of U.S. voters to publicize its performances across the country.

The American people want to know that their private data is in safe hands. That is why, at the beginning of 2025, our administration handed the Social Security information of every American over to Elon Musk. Nowhere is private data safer than in the hands of big tech.

Sadly, such care was not taken in previous administrations. Just yesterday, FBI Director Kash Patel patched us in from his remote office in Las Vegas to inform us of a widespread data breach the likes of which had never been seen before. Namely, that Shen Yun had utilized voter information to distribute flyers, door hangers, and other advertising materials as part of its efforts to promote its ongoing tour of dance-forward rhythmic arts celebrating the rich tapestry of China before communism.

Granted, as an anti-communist, far-right religious movement, the views of Shen Yun’s founders largely align with our own. And our report found no evidence that the nonprofit behind Shen Yun used sensitive voter data for anything other than encouraging Americans to purchase tickets to a musical extravaganza showcasing thousands of years of traditional Chinese culture.

But consider the propagandistic power of that kind of marketing heft in the wrong hands. We estimate that the average American has come across a Shen Yun pamphlet, leaflet, or poster at least seventeen times in the last six months. What’s to stop bad actors from using American voter data to do the same thing? Like the Chinese Communist Party? Or the Blue Man Group?

The ugly truth is, our election systems were hacked. The mainstream media will point out that state voter rolls are publicly available. And that by “the voter rolls were hacked” we mean “the voter rolls were purchased for a small fee.” But that does not change the fact that they were easily accessed and used to distribute at least a dozen Shen Yun brochures per household within a two-hundred-mile radius of every music hall, theater, and arena in the country.

Even worse, government officials knew of this nationwide misuse of voter data and deliberately withheld that information. In 2020, when flyers for a Shen Yun performance in Washington, D.C. were dropped off at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, White House staffers deliberately intercepted and discarded them without even briefing the president. What else were these Deep State actors hiding?

That is why President Trump is so focused on restoring the integrity of our elections. Whether it’s telling the Supreme Court to gut the Voting Rights Act because it was disenfranchising white voters by giving Black voters proportionate representation, or bullying Congress into passing the SAVE Act, the president remains committed to ensuring that only the right people are able to vote.

While none of those legislative changes will stop Shen Yun from canvassing every neighborhood in your city whenever one of their dance troupes rolls through town, it will ensure Republican electoral dominance for the next one hundred years. And Republican electoral dominance all but guarantees a hot war with China some time this century. Once the CCP is defeated, the Shen Yun folks will probably take it down a notch. Two birds, one stone.

And don’t worry, if Democrats do continue to tamper with our nation’s elections by getting more votes than their opponents, you can rest easy knowing the president has an entire roster of tech founders ready to fix any voting machines that show the Democrat ahead. Democracies only work when a small group of billionaires is put in charge of everything.

Is It a Red Flag? The Odyssey Edition

Amy Greenlee — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 11:00:00 -0400

He’s been away from home for twenty years.
Not a red flag. This is an opportunity for you to embrace some alone time and discover new interests, like bird-watching or weaving burial shrouds.

He’s been having sexual relations with a goddess.
Not a red flag, since refusing a deity might have led to death or something far worse: being called an ill-mannered guest.

He is willing to sacrifice six crew members for his own survival.
Not a red flag. Everyone must come up with their own answer to the trolley problem. Never judge another person’s choice until you yourself have taken a turn at the lever.

He is a master of disguise.
Not a red flag unless he doesn’t know when to turn it off and you can’t stand role-play. If an eagle flies by carrying a white goose, it could be a sign that he is open to a discussion. Or it could just be him, dressed in another one of his elaborate costumes.

There is a second goddess.
Not necessarily a red flag. Goddesses are notorious for stealing each other’s sex-humans. Plus, there was that night when the two of you were waiting in the Taco Bell drive-thru, and he said, “But what if a goddess appears to me and forces me to have sex with them?” And you rolled your eyes and said, “Sure, honey. If you’re just sitting somewhere minding your own business, and an actual goddess forces you to have sex with them, then, no, that would not be cheating.” Then you ate your chalupa and forgot all about it until now.

He pretends to be a beggar and sneaks into the house to assess your loyalty.
Not a red flag, because he more than anyone knows what can happen in twenty years. Hopefully he will be quick about it, though, because you can’t keep this burial-shroud ruse up for much longer—people do have a general sense of how long it should take to weave something.

He slaughters 108 men who were interested in marrying you.
Not a red flag. People in long-term relationships often find themselves wondering how happy they would have been with someone else. This will no longer be a concern for you because there will be no one else.

He hangs several maids.
Not a red flag. Most husbands will barely lift a scrubbing brush to “purify the household.” This is above and beyond.

He lashes out at you for asking him to move the bed.
Not a red flag, because he could just be tired from a long day of meetings at the office or executions in the Great Hall. Before picking a fight, ask yourself if the bed thing can wait until tomorrow.

He claims the bed cannot be moved because he carved it out of an olive tree and built the rest of the house around it.
Sorry, but this is a red flag. Anyone who truly loves you would have known that rearranging furniture is an essential coping strategy, and they would have constructed the marriage bed accordingly. Looks like it might be time to gather up your twenty years of textile crafts and head out on a journey of your own.

As Your Manager, I Don’t Think It’s Too Much to Ask That You Read My Mind

Brandon J. Talley — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:04:00 -0400

I’ve requested this meeting because I’ve noticed a concerning trend: It doesn’t seem like you’re reading my mind. This is quite troubling because tasks I’ve never mentioned before are falling through the cracks. All of this could be avoided if you quit relying on written or verbal requests and started showing some initiative. Failure to magically know what I want simply isn’t going to fly.

I just can’t keep reminding you to do things I haven’t told you about. I don’t know how many warnings I’ve given you now. How many have there been? You should be keeping track of this. This is the problem right here. Why aren’t you anticipating?

At first, I thought this could just be a simple oversight. Maybe you were accidentally reading somebody else’s mind. Maybe you were reading Jerry’s. But after repeatedly dropping unmentioned deadlines, being unprepared for unscheduled meetings, and not bringing me ice cream that time it got really hot, I knew we had a serious issue. You are always blissfully unaware of what I want, even after I roll my eyes and say something like, “Would somebody please bring me an ice cream cone?” You then have the audacity to ask questions like what flavor I want. I can’t keep doing your job for you.

Your lack of mind reading is now leading you to ask incessant questions. Questions about what I want, or what I mean by that, or “Are you sure, because that’s completely opposite of what you said to me last time” need to stop. Further clarifications unnecessarily hold up our workflow. When you ask if I’d rather do X or Y, “yes” is a crystal clear answer.

If you really can’t read my mind, you should have disclosed that disability in your application. Now what am I supposed to do? I’m all for reasonable accommodations, but there’s nothing reasonable about forcing me to communicate what I want.

How can I be expected to put my thoughts into words? How could I possibly distill the free-form nature of the human mind into a linguistic box? How about this: Sometimes you do things not how I had pictured, and that is bad. Sometimes you do things how I pictured, but now I don’t like it, so it is bad. Sometimes I don’t know what I want at all, but after I see what you did, I know it’s completely wrong and bad, and now I am very angry. Instead, try not to do things bad. Is that helpful?

I’d like to know how you’ll address the fact that you aren’t reading my mind in the future. Perhaps medication? Perhaps you could start by pursuing an extremely invasive surgery? Maybe in your free time you could take some sort of night classes with a local mystic? Whatever you end up doing, I hope you began last week because that’s when I think you should have started. If you haven’t, I will be very condescending about how obvious it was that you should have done that.

But once you can read my mind, don’t do it too much. I want you to read my mind, but within reason. It would be an invasion of privacy to, say, use the ability to see how much I’m paying you compared to your coworkers, or divine that sometimes when I say I have a phone meeting I’m actually taking naps under my desk, or reach into the deepest corners of my psyche and find that through a series of oversights, you don’t have health insurance. Again, these are things you shouldn’t read my mind about.

Moving forward, I hope you can incorporate my constructive feedback into actionable change. I want you to do better not only to make my life easier, but also so that you aren’t yelled at by me. So please do better, but if you have any issues, please don’t hesitate to reach out. After all, I’m not a mind reader.

An Interview with Dave Eggers About His New Novel, Contrapposto

Knopf — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 07:28:00 -0400

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KNOPF: This is a very funny, very moving book about the deepest kind of friendship. It unfolds over many decades, and the novel took shape over decades for you, too. When did you begin thinking about these characters?

DAVE EGGERS: I’ve been thinking about Cricket and Olympia for about twenty years, and was writing random passages about them much of that period. Sometimes a certain book takes an especially long time to gestate and make its correct form known, and this was one of those books.

Q: The book covers about 65 years in the lives of its two main characters, Cricket and Olympia. Their interactions take place all over the world, from Indiana to Thailand, from Philadelphia to Turkey and Paris. Did you always see this as a book with that kind of epic scope?

DE: Once I decided it would cover most of their lives, yes. I knew that having grown up in rural Indiana, they’d be restless and curious about the rest of the world, and I really came to love tossing them all over the globe. Each section of the book starts in a very different place in their lives, physically and mentally, and the reader’s left to fill in the gaps.

Q: Which becomes surprisingly easy, given how long we’ve known them. The novel starts when they’re 8 and 9. Cricket is a quiet kid who loves to draw. What does he see in Olympia?

DE: She’s obviously far more worldly and erudite and quick on her feet, even at age nine. Some kids are. There are just some humans that develop exponentially faster than others. Olympia is that way—just intellectually on fire from minute one, along with being this beautiful human, too, with golden eyes. Cricket is a talented draftsman, but Olympia’s mind works at about ten times the pace of his.

Q: And she has ambitions for him.

DE: Without her, his ambitions might be pretty modest. He doesn’t ever know what to do with anything he creates. But from the start, she is his champion. She wants to start movements, change the face of the art world, on and on. He just wants to draw.

Q: You were a young draftsman yourself, going to art schools and such. Did you have such a champion? An Olympia?

DE: No, nothing like this. Olympia was created out of whole cloth. I wanted to conjure someone who would drag Cricket out of a studio and into the world. She was huge fun to write because while she’s brilliant and loyal, she’s a bit mercurial, too. You know she’ll re-enter Cricket’s life periodically, but you’re never really sure what angle she’ll be coming from.

Q: She’s very comfortable with the business of art, eventually becoming a gallerist and curator. Cricket is not so adept, and struggles with the commerce aspect of it.

DE: I think we’ve all known people like this—they have great talent but are stubborn about even the smallest compromises, and they loathe the business side of the artist’s life. Cricket can’t really manage it. He’s a bit of a classicist at a time when trends and theories were very important to observe and address.

Q: Contrapposto is a pose in figure drawing, which is something we see Cricket and Olympia take part in again and again over the course of the book. Can you say more about the long tradition of learning to draw the body—the rigor of it, the intimacy—and all of what that means in the context of the book?

DE: When you see that trope of an artist holding their thumb out and squinting, that’s the artist “measuring” the proportions of a figure. It’s a real thing! You look at the model, stick your arm out straight, and you cover their head with your thumb. That thumb-height becomes your unit of measure. Then you count how many heads the model’s total height is, how many heads the width of their shoulders are, on and on. By comparing all of these dimensions against each other, you can arrive at perfect accuracy (if you’re seeking that, of course). I’m convinced most people can be taught these techniques, too; it’s the same process that’s been observed for hundreds of years. The rigor of classical drawing was revelatory to me, and I wanted to convey that to a reader, too—the fact classical art education was much like a classical musical education, in that it was based on hard skills, hundreds of hours of practice, and a certain humility, too. But it is imminently learnable, and in an exhilarating way, it teaches any student how to see.

Q: In college they have a teacher, Marcus Carpenter, who is a bit of rebel in that he’s a classicist at a time when that’s not in vogue. He doesn’t kowtow to the theories of the day, and he’s ostracized for it.

DE: There are such people, always, thank god. In Carpenter, Cricket finds a mentor who also appreciates the intrinsic beauty of the art he loves, as opposed to art that rides certain temporary fashions. More than anything, Carpenter takes all the competitiveness out of what’s often present in art schools—a very strange misery that comes from students pitted against each other. But there is a way, a better way, to bring up young artists together.

Q: Cricket and Olympia know each other so well that they bicker with total, hilarious abandon, but they also fight fiercely for each other. Were you always sure about their path together?

A: I’ve had the same friends since grade school, so with these ancient friendships, you can speak candidly to each other, and pretension doesn’t get you far. But there’s an element of mild resistance, too, embedded in these old friendships. Cricket and Olympia want to reinvent themselves over their lives, but they also know they can’t pull one over on someone who’s known them since they were eight. At that point, you know each other on a molecular level. So you fight for that person as you would fight to keep a limb of your own body.

Q: In a time when AI relationships have suddenly left the realm of sci-fi and are seemingly both common and legitimate, this novel argues for the irreplaceable connection that can occur between two humans, in either romance or friendship. Do you think Cricket and Olympia share something rare in their relationship?

DE: I don’t know that it’s rare, but I did want to show a complex friendship over time. For millions of people, there are times when you’re in love, then you’re friends, and maybe love happens again… The line for Cricket and Olympia is blurry, which I think happens with so many people who don’t get married but who provide a certain familiar comfort to each other. Together they have a kind of perfect imbalance, which is really about as good as we can do.

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Contrapposto is out June 9, but is available for preorder now.

Disgruntled Performance

Ali Fitzgerald — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 07:04:00 -0400

Underground Artists is an ongoing comic by Ali Fitzgerald (Hungover Bear & Friends) that follows woodland creatures as they create art and search out whimsy in a bleak forest.

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Democrats Need to Win Back Voters by Becoming Republicans

Ginny Hogan and Carlos Greaves — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 07:00:00 -0400

The following is an excerpt from our upcoming book, Obey In Advance: How to Survive and Thrive Under Authoritarianism by longtime McSweeney’s writer Ginny Hogan and McSweeney’s resident satirist Carlos Greaves. From how to stick your head in the sand to avoid thinking about your dictator, to the most effective ways to reeducate the masses, this hilarious (and oddly reassuring?) guide has you covered—whether you want to Make Authoritarianism Great Again or not.

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Democrats Need to Win Back Voters by Becoming Republicans

“Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is offering a warning about the rise of a ‘dirtbag left’ within the Democratic Party, a reference to candidates on the left who have run and won primaries while identifying themselves as democratic socialists.” — The Hill

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The Democratic Party needs to take back our country. After losing in a landslide by 1.5 percent of the vote in 2024, it was clear the party had completely lost touch with everyday Americans. Now there is only one solution: we must win back voters by becoming Republicans.

If the election told us one thing, it’s that, across the board, the American people like Republican policies more than they like Democratic policies. That’s why we must head in the same direction the Republican Party is heading—towards a Christian ethnonationalist, crony capitalist state. Turns out, that’s what our base wanted all along.

Think of the voter ideological spectrum as a beach, and each political party as a beach-chair rental hut. If the Republican chair rental hut is over on the far right side of the beach, then all we, as Democrats, have to do is park our chair rental hut a little to the left of their hut, and we’ll capture the entire left side of the voter beach. According to the principle of minimum differentiation, America wants two political parties that are virtually indistinguishable, and that’s exactly what we intend to give them.

Kamala Harris did an admirable job trying to become a Republican. Nothing says “party of the people” like seeking out the endorsement of a wildly popular, salt-of-the-Earth everyman like Dick Cheney. If there’s one mistake the Harris campaign made, it was not doing more of that.

From now on, we must do everything Republicans do, but better. Democratic candidates should be on right-leaning comedians’ podcasts making fun of trans athletes. They should abandon “woke” social policy talking points like “racism is a thing there should be less of” and focus instead on kitchen-table economic issues like “immigrants should not be allowed to go to the doctor.” And they must stop harping on democracy since clearly nobody cares. The only “norm” the Democrats should be focused on from now on is Norm from Cheers—a beer-drinking middle-aged white guy—which is a key demographic Democrats have been ceding to Republicans for far too long.

These changes are the only way Democrats can earn back voter trust. By becoming indistinguishable from Republicans, Democrats can prove that, like Republicans, they too are in step with the voting populace. Then, the only other task remaining is to crush any opposition to the left of us. After all, that’s exactly what Republicans would do.

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Advance praise for Obey in Advance:

“This book is the catharsis we all need. It’s not easy to make this current political moment funny, but Greaves and Hogan pull it off again and again. I laughed my ass off (which explains where it went).”
—Nikki Glasser

“This is the only self-help guide to living under a dictatorship that you will ever need, and by far the funniest. Read it before it’s banned.”
—Andy Borowitz, The Borowitz Report

“Democracy is priceless, but fascism sure seems to pay well. If you’re morally bankrupt and looking to sell your soul, Obey in Advance has everything you need for a profitable life of lickspittlery.”
—Kevin Kruse, Professor of History, Princeton University

Obey in Advance will be out this September and is available for preorder at our store.

We Need to Stop This Reckless Rhetoric About Abolishing the Thought Police

Cezary Jan Strusiewicz — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 20:00:00 -0400

“As a new video emerged capturing gunshots and yelling in a fatal shooting in Maine involving federal immigration officers, the state’s governor called on Congress to immediately reform and rein in ICE ‘before more families are robbed of a loved one.’” — ABC News

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I’ve been hearing a lot of talk lately about abolishing the Thought Police, and frankly, it’s the sort of unserious political discourse that has sadly inundated our everyday lives. Everyone wants to tear down institutions these days. Nobody wants to BUILD. Nobody has any respect for tradition anymore. The Thought Police have existed for over forty years now. They’re right there with the Parthenon, the pyramids, and New Coke.

Some of our greatest cultural achievements are younger than the Thought Police. The Segway is younger than the TP. The Slanket. The Furby. Can you imagine the modern world without those marvels of civilization? Of course not. Then how come the Thought Police doesn’t get the same consideration? If we start just dismantling every government institution all willy-nilly, pretty soon we’ll be living in a country where agencies are expected to justify their existence instead of simply continuing to exist because they already exist.

Critics also love pointing out how the Thought Police weren’t even part of Oceania’s original governmental structure, having been established during a national security reorganization following the bombings by The Brotherhood. You know what I call that? Modernization. Progress. That is textbook adapting to the times, which is also why I’m glad that the Thought Police have since expanded beyond their original mandate.

Agencies that remain narrowly focused on things like “goals” or “the law” or “the Constitution” demonstrate a shocking lack of initiative. The Thought Police understood this better than anyone. They looked at the problem of policing thoughts and, boldly and BRAVELY, asked themselves whether facial expressions, private conversations, body language, suspicious silences, and generally giving off a bad vibe also deserved government attention.

Yes, much has been made of the fact that the Thought Police seem to devote a worrisome amount of attention to perfectly ordinary citizens instead of to hardened enemies of the state. I don’t even know how to respond to that without treating my imaginary opponent in this debate like a literal baby. Goo-goo-gaga. Does that address your concerns? Do you want a bottle? Then listen up, kiddo: Ordinary citizens make up the overwhelming majority of the population. From an efficiency perspective, concentrating on citizens simply makes more fiscal sense. If every law enforcement agency focused only on wrongdoers, there would be no reason to grow them or expand their role. And infinite growth is not only possible, it’s also what all government agencies should strive for.

There has likewise been a lot of manufactured outrage over the agency operating discreetly, often not identifying themselves even amid arrests and interrogations. This obsession with visibility is deeply worrying. Some things should stay hidden. Would you want glass walls around public toilets? Should department stores’ changing rooms have streaming cameras inside them? You see my point. Plus, the uncertainty of who the Thought Police are and what they are doing creates a healthier society. Citizens become more polite/paranoid, which are basically the same thing. Gossip goes down, people stop sharing their inane opinions with you, and life generally improves when neighbors start worrying if asking to borrow your pruning shears could be interpreted as domestic terrorism.

Finally, the would-be killers of the Thought Police assure us that all the functions performed by the agency could be transferred elsewhere, under the jurisdiction of people who don’t treat the Constitution as a series of buzzkill suggestions. This breathtaking optimism reveals just how little the public understands the ultimate call of the TP. The Thought Police are but a humble participant in Big Brother’s much larger and more noble undertaking: the creation of a government so attentive, so involved, and so lovingly present that citizens never have to suffer the anxiety of wondering whether anyone is watching. You can slap a different badge on them and give their “We can do whatever we want” warrants a new letterhead, but that won’t change our day-to-day reality.

So, no, the Thought Police should remain exactly where they are. Not because they’re perfect but because they have become an institution. After all, true institutional greatness is measured not by whether a program works but by how difficult it’d be to get rid of it. And don’t you want to live in a world where that kind of tick-like perseverance gets rewarded?

Effective Immediately, Every God-Fearing Soldier Will Be Jacked to the Gills with Testosterone

Kate Chrisman — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 14:15:00 -0400

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday a new mandatory screening program to test all service members age 30 and older, including women, for testosterone deficiency annually.” – New York Times

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In the past, Washington said the real dangers facing Americans were nuclear weapons, cyberattacks, China, terrorism, and online radicalization. I, too, have seen many of these reports.

But none of them capture the true threat facing the American public: low testosterone levels.

Numbers don’t lie. Since we started testing testosterone levels yesterday, the results were the worst this country has ever seen. Effective immediately, every god-fearing soldier will be jacked to the gills with T.

Consider the modern battlefield—a brutal and unrelenting place. On a remote base outside Las Vegas, a drone operator sits in an air-conditioned office, headset on, coffee in hand. Under this new directive, the operator’s testosterone levels that were once low are now dangerously high. Before his hand even touches the joystick, his hormone panel is transmitted through diplomatic channels. American T levels end the war before it even begins.

If the enemy doesn’t grasp what 1,472 nanograms per deciliter means—and to be honest, some of them won’t; that’s sort of the whole problem with these people—then yes, we get to send the missile.

But not just any missile. While our T enhancement program starts with the individual warfighter, we’re not stopping there. Our engineers are already developing next-generation payloads by replacing components in our missile programs with material that’s 100 percent natural, 100 percent destructive, and 100 percent pure American testosterone.

Now sure, some skeptics will say if testosterone is the answer for America, isn’t it the answer for the whole world? And to that I say, “We’re keeping this information top secret by releasing it on all major social media platforms.”

Once we’ve optimized the individual fighter and the arsenal, the last piece is infrastructure. That’s why, together with Secretary Kennedy at Health and Human Services, we’re removing fluoride from the water supply and replacing it with trace amounts of 100 percent pure testosterone, sourced exclusively from the manosphere.

Ladies of America, we kindly (but forcefully) ask that you refrain from drinking water.

I’ve heard the criticism. Some have asked whether providing government-funded T to our troops is a form of gender-affirming hormone therapy. Absolutely not. Gender-affirming hormone therapy is when the government gives service members testosterone to help them align their bodies with their gender identity. This T is being administered to align their bodies with the Pentagon’s identity.

Whether our military members are deployed to Iran, the Pacific theater, or the streets of Dubuque, Iowa, Americans can feel safe knowing our soldiers are now experiencing the combat-ready effects of mainlining testosterone, including increased aggression, acne, a low sperm count, and excessive body hair.