McSweeney’s

Our Military Is SICK AF, Bro

Madeline Goetz — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 13:33:00 -0400

“The Pentagon will no longer require members of the U.S. military to get the flu vaccine, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday.” —Reuters

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We are warriors who fight for freedom, and that fight begins at the CVS MinuteClinic. No more mandatory flu shots for service members. No more state-mandated infractions against bodily autonomy. You hear me? Now, drop and give me twenty.

We’re bringing back the military to the OG hardcore-ness the Founding Fathers experienced: fighting during an outbreak of smallpox. Yes, George Washington inoculated his army, but what if he hadn’t? That’s what we’re about to find out. American progress is all about making discoveries like that. Heroes are born by walking the paths of the scientifically unknown and medically unadvised.

Our service members are PATRIOTS, and they’re SICK as DOGS.

You might think a soldier with an active case of influenza wouldn’t be very useful in a stealth operation, but you’d be DEAD wrong. We’ll place a BRAVE individual with a NASTY post-nasal drip in enemy territory to stand there and sniffle until the enemy becomes so agitated by the constant throat clearing that they reveal themselves and surrender. That’s how wars are won, by hacking and wheezing away at the enemy’s defenses.

We all saw how intimidating RFK Jr. looks when he works out, and that titan of a man sure as HELL isn’t getting flu shots.

The full-body tremors will help our soldiers’ trigger finger reflexes. We want twitchy, masculine Pulp Fiction fingers on those guns. Plus, they won’t even mind the stench of clogged toilets on our warships because they will have permanently lost their sense of smell.

They won’t teach you this at a fancy-schmancy liberal-elite arts college, but only the hardest of hardcore soldiers can run a mile with sub-60 percent lung capacity. In fact, most of our recruits will be coughing so hard, they won’t even need to do crunches. Coughing gives you abs. I learned this on a Twitch livestream.

Studies have shown that individuals under the influence of NyQuil and eight hundred milligrams of caffeine are just as able to hold a rifle as individuals under the influence of gin and eight hundred milligrams of caffeine—trust me, I’ve checked. You don’t need a SHOT to shoot shit, unless it’s a shot of navy-strength (obviously, I’m talking about the gin standard.) Besides, the flu isn’t all that different from a bad hangover, and I go to work with one of those every day. MAN UP.

We’re more than prepared to handle a few to several thousand soldiers with flu symptoms. All those tissues from stuffy noses? They’re getting chucked in a burn pit. All those DRIPPING WET pajamas from fever-induced night sweats? Also going in the burn pit.

Now’s a good time to buy some stock in Halls.

We’ll send our soldiers experiencing chills to tropical combat zones (the Caribbean, Cuba, Walt Disney World, etc.) and our soldiers experiencing fevers to Greenland. We’ll save so much money on heating and cooling the barracks. You’re welcome, taxpayers. We’ll also save money on food rations if our soldiers are only eating broth, saltines, and bananas. The liberal media wackos got really mad about all the steak and lobster, so they should be cheering for this change.

Think of all the brave soldiers who are too scared to get an annual flu shot that will be lining up to join our EPIC ranks. We need more tough, all-American fighters with hearts of lions and tigers who haven’t been to the doctor since their parents stopped making them go.

Make no mistake, our military is much more lethal than the flu. Brave boys don’t GET SICK, and brave women don’t make BEING SICK someone else’s problem. The warrior ethos involves a lot of white-knuckling and other general whiteness.

Lastly, and totally unrelated, but a lingering head cold is now a valid reason for anyone related to the president to dodge the draft.

Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of Trump’s Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes: March 2026: Atrocities 805-866

Emily Greenberg and Cliff Mayotte — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights, humanitarian, economic, and constitutional crises, we felt it critical to make an inventory of this new round of horrors. This list will be updated monthly between now and the end of Donald Trump’s second term.

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ATROCITY KEY

– Authoritarianism
– Constitutional Illegalities, Collusion, and/or Obstruction of Justice
– Environment
– Harassment, Bullying, Retribution, and/or Sexual Misconduct
– Lies and Misinformation
– Musk Madness
– Policy
– Public Statements and Social Media Posts
– Trump Family Business Dealings
– Trump Staff and Administration
– White Supremacy, Racism, Misogyny, Homophobia, Transphobia, and/or Xenophobia

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February 2026

Main Index

Trump’s first term

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March 2026

– March 1, 2026 – Pejman Karshenas Najafabadi, 59, died in ICE custody after being treated at Merit Health Hospital in Natchez, Mississippi. Najafabadi first came to the US in 1991 as a lawful permanent resident. ICE claimed the cause of death was cardiac arrest.
– March 2, 2026 – Emmanuel Clifford Damas, 56, died in ICE custody at the HonorHealth Scottsdale Osborn Medical Center in Scottsdale, Arizona. An asylum seeker, Damas was held at the Florence Correctional Center, which is operated by CoreCivic, whose facilities have faced scrutiny. In mid-February, Damas told staff that he had a toothache, but he was not sent to a dentist. “He had a toothache and kept going to the nurse to ask for medical assistance. They kept giving him ibuprofen, ibuprofen, ibuprofen, and then it got infected. The infection spread from his mouth to his neck, his chest, and his lungs. Then his body went into sepsis shock,” said Presly Nelson, Damas’s brother.
– March 2, 2026 – Just two days after the US launched strikes against Iran, Melania Trump delivered a speech calling for “peace through education” at the United Nations Security Council. Despite the Trump administration’s attacks on DEI and its dismantling of the Department of Education, the First Lady praised education. She said that nations should promote “empathy for others, transcending geography, religion, race, gender,” peppering her speech with words like “prejudice,” “gender,” and “race” that the administration has instructed federal agencies to limit or avoid.

Melania Trump Chairs Historic UN Security Council Meeting (Sky News Austrailia)
– March 2, 2026 – During an ABC interview, Trump acknowledged a personal dimension that influenced his decision to attack Iran. “I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well, I got him first,” Trump said, referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed, and two assassination attempts against Trump in 2024. After Trump launched airstrikes in his first term that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, Iranian officials publicly vowed revenge. In 2024, before the two assassination attempts against Trump, officials warned the Trump campaign that Iran wanted to kill Trump, but no evidence suggests that Iran actually played a role in those two attempts. Launching military strikes for personal reasons is illegal and unconstitutional.
– March 2, 2026 – The Department of Labor launched an investigation into Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who used taxpayer funds to throw herself a birthday party at the Department of Labor’s headquarters, among other alleged misconduct. Although Chavez-DeRemer told the House Appropriations Committee that the event was not a birthday party, a photo showed her blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Chavez-DeRemer was also accused of using department funds for personal travel and having an affair with a member of her security team.
– March 3, 2026 – A deaf six-year-old was detained with his mother and sibling after an asylum appointment in San Francisco, and the family was deported several days later to Colombia. The family’s lawyer accused ICE of violating federal law by purposefully withholding information about the family’s location in detention to prevent legal efforts to stop the deportation. He also said the boy had no access to medical care or devices.
– March 3, 2026 – In a letter to Congress justifying the Iran strikes, Trump said the goal was to “neutralize Iran’s malign activities,” but he did not provide evidence of an imminent threat, contradicting his own administration’s earlier claims and calling into question the legality of the attacks. The letter said the campaign was carried out “in collective self-defense of our regional allies, including Israel,” though Trump also walked back this notion, saying he “might have forced [Israel’s] hand” but not the other way around. The letter did not mention plans to overthrow the current Iranian leadership even though Trump had earlier called on Iranians to “take over your government.”
– March 4, 2026 – A CNN/SSRS poll and an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll showed that the majority of Americans, 59 percent and 56 percent respectively, disapproved of war in Iran. The CNN/SSRS poll was conducted before reports that six US troops had been killed.
– March 5, 2026 – Less than a week after the US launched deadly strikes against Iran, the White House posted a video on X called “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY” that mixed bombing footage from Iran with memes and jokes from Top Gun, Halo, and Dragon Ball Z. White House Deputy Communications Director Kaelan Dorr later reposted the video with the text, “Wake up, Daddy’s Home.” On the same day, the White House also posted a video of airstrike footage overlayed with the lyrics “Kaboom, kablow” from the rap song “Bazooka” and another mixing footage of missile detonations with SpongeBob SquarePants clips. The following day, a video was posted that included footage of trucks and people on fire with the “WASTED” message that players see when they die in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. “Little girls are dead. Six Americans are dead. It’s not a video game. … It’s not another chance to troll the libs. It’s f—ing war,” wrote Jon Favreau, a liberal podcaster. Iran’s UN Ambassador Amir-Saeid Iravani estimated that over 1,300 Iranian civilians had died and thousands more had been injured in the conflict as of March 6.

Justice the American Way (The White House)
– March 5, 2026 – The Department of Justice released new FBI documents in connection to the Epstein files that described several interviews with a woman who accused Trump of sexual assault. During the interviews, which took place in 2019, the woman claimed Trump assaulted her in the 1980s, when she was a teenager. Officials claimed the files were previously withheld because they were duplicates of files that had already been released, but that was not the case. Officials also acknowledged that they had incorrectly identified additional documents that were incorrectly coded as duplicates.
– March 5, 2026 – Trump fired embattled Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was widely criticized over her handling of the administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and her appearance in a $220 million ad campaign, among other issues. A Trump administration official said that the president decided to fire Noem due to “a culmination of her many unfortunate leadership failures, including the fallout in Minnesota, the ad campaign, the allegations of infidelity, the mismanagement of her staff, and her constant feuding with the heads of other agencies, including CBP and ICE.” Trump nominated Senator Markwayne Mullin to replace Noem and said Noem would continue to serve the administration as envoy for the Shield of the Americas.
– March 5, 2026 – The public lambasted Trump’s planned White House ballroom in thousands of comments sent to the National Capital Planning Commission ahead of its scheduled hearing to review the ballroom. Although the administration claimed the ballroom project was popular, more than 97 percent of the 35,000 comments were critical of Trump’s plans. “I oppose the spending of $300 million on this project, which was initiated without the proper authorization, permits, or design review,” wrote Anara Guard, whose message was echoed in approximately 10,000 other comments. Added Jim Cunningham, who voted for Trump three times, “Trump is only a temporary occupant of the White House. It belongs to the American people. It’s not his personal property.”
– March 5, 2026 – Diplomats and travelers criticized the State Department for stranding Americans in the Middle East. After the US attacked Iran, several countries shut down their airspace and airports. Prior to Wednesday, Americans who called the State Department hotline received an automated message stating that the US government could not assist them in leaving the region. Veteran diplomats also criticized the State Department for not issuing official alerts, not advising Americans against travel before the attacks, and for earlier layoffs that left many embassies and supporting offices understaffed.
– March 5, 2026 – In a phone interview with Reuters, Trump said the US should have a role in choosing Iran’s next leader. “We’re going to have to choose that person along with Iran. We’re going to have to choose that person,” said Trump. He added, “We want to be involved in the process of choosing the person who is going to lead Iran into the future, so we don’t have to go back every five years and do this again and again.” Legal experts said Trump’s plan would violate international law. “There is a rule in international law which is called the right to self-determination, and it means that it is up to a people to choose their leadership and to choose their political structure,” said Matthias Goldman, a professor of international law at EBS University. “It is not upon a foreign government… it is up to the people to determine themselves.”
– March 6, 2026 – The US labor market lost 92,000 jobs in February—the second largest decline in monthly job creation since the pandemic—and unemployment rose to 4.4 percent. Following the release of the latest jobs numbers, the three major stock exchanges also dipped. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who was under investigation, attempted to downplay the weak numbers and blamed the job losses on “record-breaking strikes and bad weather.” However, economists also attributed the decline to uncertainty over the Trump administration’s trade policies, artificial intelligence, and the availability of workers, given the administration’s immigration crackdown.
– March 6, 2026 – Declaring an emergency due to the war in Iran, the State Department bypassed congressional approval to send Israel more than 20,000 bombs. The State Department wrote that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had “determined and provided detailed justification that an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale to the Government of Israel.” “Today’s invocation of the Arms Export Control Act’s emergency authority to bypass congressional review for two munitions cases to Israel exposes a stark contradiction at the heart of this administration’s case for war,” said Representative Gregory Meeks, who reviews arms transfers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “The Trump administration has repeatedly insisted it was fully prepared for this war. Rushing to invoke emergency authority to circumvent Congress tells a different story. This is an emergency of the Trump administration’s own creation.” Congress did not authorize the war in Iran.
– March 6, 2026 – Marking yet another shift in his war objectives, Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” by Iran. “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER! After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. ‘MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!),” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
– March 7, 2026 – The bodies of the first six US troops killed in Iran arrived at Dover Air Force Base. The deceased were identified as Major Jeffrey O’Brien, Captain Cody Khork, Sergeant 1st Class Nicole Amor, Sergeant 1st Class Noah Tietjens, and Sergeant Declan Coady; the sixth body was believed to be that of Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, but was awaiting final positive identification by a medical examiner. The troops were working in a makeshift operations center in Kuwait at the time of the strike. “It’s a very sad day,” Trump said. The president wore a white, Trump-branded “USA” cap during the transfer.

Trump Joins Families During the Return of US Soldiers Killed in War (AP)
– March 7, 2026 – Estefany Rodriguez Florez, a journalist for the Spanish-language Nashville Noticias who reported stories critical of ICE, was detained by federal agents. The day before her detention, Rodriguez had reported on four immigration arrests. “We’re concerned one of the motivating reasons could be that she’s a journalist,” said Alejandro Medina III, Rodriguez’s husband. Born in Colombia, Rodriguez had immigrated legally to the US and had a valid work permit, a pending green card through her American husband, and a pending asylum claim due to threats she had received while reporting in Colombia. Rodriguez’s lawyer, Joel Coxander, said Rodriguez was targeted because of her reporting and accused ICE of arresting her without a valid warrant.
– March 8, 2026 – Trump threatened to withhold his signature on all bills until Congress passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act. The announcement escalated his efforts to change election rules ahead of the 2026 midterms. In a social media post, Trump said, “I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed.” If passed, the measure would transform voter registration and voting in the US. It would require eligible voters to prove their citizenship with documents like a valid US passport or a birth certificate and a valid photo ID. It is already illegal for non-US citizens to vote in federal elections.
– March 9, 2026 – Trump stood by his claim that Iran could have been responsible for a deadly Tomahawk missile strike on a girls’ school in Minab, Iran, killing approximately 175 people, mostly children. During a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump told reporters that he hadn’t seen video of the attack and stated, “Well, I haven’t seen it, and I will say that the Tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around, is used by, you know, is sold and used by other countries.” He added that Iran “also has some Tomahawks” and didn’t rule out that Iran had struck the school. Neither Iran nor Israel was known to possess the US-made missiles.
– March 10, 2026 – Trump told congressional Republicans that the war with Iran could be over “pretty quickly,” as he defended the military campaign and outlined Washington’s objectives in the conflict. The US and Israel launched the campaign against Iran on February 28. In his speech, Trump highlighted what he described as the successes of Operation Epic Fury. He framed the recent military action against Iran as a “little excursion” that was necessary to eliminate “some evil.” He added that while the conflict had caused a “little pause” in the economy, it was not a big one, and the economy would quickly surge and “blow it away.” NPR reported that since Trump’s excursion began, at least 1,200 Iranians had been killed.
– March 11, 2026 – The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to end a program shielding hundreds of thousands of Haitians from deportation. Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the justices to block a lower court decision that found the Trump administration had violated the law when it terminated Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program that allows some 350,000 Haitians to live and work legally in the US. Sauer argued that “lower courts are again attempting to block major executive-branch policy initiatives in ways that inflict specific harms to the national interest and foreign relations.” Geoff Pipoly, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at the law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, said in a statement, “We think the facts and the law speak for themselves and look forward to defending our Haitian clients in the Supreme Court.”
– March 11, 2026 – The Pentagon stopped permitting photographers to cover Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s briefings on the war in Iran. A Pentagon spokesman, Joel Valdez, declined to comment for a Los Angeles Times story. Most mainstream news organizations left their desks at the Pentagon rather than accept new Trump administration rules that restricted their movements. They were replaced by a newly constituted press corps that agreed to the rules and, to a large extent, worked for outlets that were supportive of Trump. The New York Times sued the Trump administration to overturn Hegseth’s rules. Charles Stadtlander, a spokesman for the Times said, “As Times has long said, there is a clear importance and public service to allowing journalists to report fully on the U.S. military. This includes photojournalists, who deserve access and credentialing to attend Pentagon briefings.”
– March 12, 2026 – On Truth Social, Trump posted a 1960’s photo of himself in uniform as a teenage high school student at the New York Military Academy. The photo caption read, “At Military Academy with my parents, Fred and Mary!” The family photo was the same one that Trump previously posted on Facebook in 2013 with the caption, “See, I can be very military. High rank!” Trump dodged the Vietnam War draft due to “bone spurs” in his heels. A 2018 New York Times article alleged that a Queens podiatrist who was renting office space from Trump’s father wrote the diagnosis as a favor to the family.
– March 12, 2026 – The Trump administration denounced CNN for airing a portion of the new Iranian Supreme Leader’s public statement. It was the second time that Trump targeted the network for reporting on how Iran was responding to the American attacks. On social media, the White House said that “fake news CNN just aired four straight minutes of uninterrupted Iranian state TV, run by the same psychotic and murderous regime that prided itself on brutally slaughtering Americans for 47 years.” White House communications director Steven Cheung added in a post on X, “Ever notice how CNN just regurgitates quotes and unverified information from Iranian terrorists? Total disgrace.” CNN responded to the White House attack and noted that Sky News and Al Jazeera also showed portions of the ayatollah’s statement live.
– March 13, 2026 – Mohammad Nazeer Paktyawal, 41, died in ICE custody after being treated at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas. Paktyawal, who had a pending asylum case, had served with US forces in Afghanistan. After the fall of Kabul, he was legally evacuated to the US, where he began working at an Afghan bakery. He was arrested while driving his kids to school. Less than a day later, despite having no prior health issues, he was dead. “It’s unacceptable. This man fought our war for ten years. He had six kids, one...

You Don’t Really Think Every Member of Trump’s Cabinet Gets Off on Being Unaccountable, Do You?

Carlos Greaves — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 13:04:00 -0400

“Kash Patel has filed a defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic, accusing the magazine and its reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick of defamation over an article that alleged the FBI director… has a habit of ‘excessive drinking and unexplained absences,’ among other recurring behavioral patterns.” — Politico

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The fake news media is once again smearing a hard-working member of our administration. The recent hit piece accusing FBI Director Kash Patel of excessive drinking is (much like the Epstein files hoax) a pathetic attempt to distract Americans from the greatest period of economic growth in our country’s history. If you haven’t noticed how cheap everything is and how much money everyone has now, then congratulations—you’ve fallen for the lying press’s elaborate ruse.

All of the accusations of Patel’s binging have perfectly logical explanations:

Choosing to spend so much of his tenure in Las Vegas has nothing to do with boozing and everything to do with the city’s reputation as a cybersecurity hub. Everyone knows the expression “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” refers to the safeguarding of state secrets.
Director Patel has assured us that the “Poodle Room” is not a bar but a shelter for rescue poodles where he volunteers. Similarly, Kash often hangs out at “The Library,” which we are confident refers to an actual library and not a Vegas nightclub called “The Library.”
When the FBI couldn’t get a hold of him, and agents had to break down his door, it wasn’t because he was passed out drunk. He had just been working so tirelessly on ridding the government of Deep State spies that he had collapsed from sleep exhaustion.
Since when is taking a taxpayer-funded jet to Italy to shotgun beers with the US men’s hockey team illegal? What’s the crime? Loving America?

So-called experts have pointed out that a high-ranking member of the intelligence community doing lord knows what at raves all over Sin City would be a major threat to national security. Especially if bad actors were to obtain compromising details that they could use as leverage.

But even if the allegations were proven true, those “experts” fail to recognize a key point—this administration is completely immune to blackmail. That’s the beauty of having a president whose followers worship him like a God and a media apparatus willing to toe the party line at all costs.

Leftist lunatics keep dreaming, for example, that the Russians will release the so-called pee tape. But even if the tape did exist, there’s no investigation that can’t be slow-walked to death, and no scandal that can’t be explained away with “It’s fake news,” or “It was made using AI,” or “That’s not an underage prostitute, that’s a consenting adult, and that’s not urine, it’s lemon-lime Gatorade.” The simple truth is President Trump’s deference to Putin has nothing to do with kompromat. He just genuinely likes the guy and is happy with the job he’s doing.

Look at the recent news that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is stepping down. The crooked media would have you believe that she’s resigning amid reports that she was drinking on the job and having an affair with a subordinate, when the truth is she’s simply transitioning to the private sector. Cabinet members leave office in the middle of their term to take worse jobs all the time.

It’s hard to ignore the pattern—Pete Hegseth, Jeanine Pirro, Kash Patel, and now Lori Chavez-DeRemer have all been accused of alcoholism and abuse of power. Do you really think it’s possible that every member of the Trump administration gets off on being completely unaccountable? Are we really expected to believe that, despite their lives of excess, they’re secretly miserable people for whom no amount of power can make up for the fact that, deep down, they know they’ve utterly failed as human beings? So they drown their putrefying self-loathing at the bottom of a liquor bottle?

What’s more likely? That? Or that the media is just making all of this stuff up?

Unless The Atlantic has actual video of Kash Patel motorboating strippers while blitzed off his ass, we suggest they drop this charade before we sue them into oblivion. And even if they did have hard evidence, it would hardly matter. Thanks to Congressional Republicans, everyone in this administration is basically unimpeachable.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he can’t still be fired. As Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi learned, the one unforgivable sin in this administration is stealing the president’s spotlight.

How to Baby-Proof Your Home

Mary Heitkamp — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0400

1. Install Baby Gates
Baby gates are great for keeping babies out of places you don’t want them to go, like inside your home. String several gates together with zip ties to form a barrier around the perimeter of your property. Most babies aren’t smart enough to figure out how to open the gates, and neither are you, but you’re probably tall enough to step over.

2. Affix Safety Latches to Lower Cabinets
Babies love opening cabinets to rifle through your cookware, cleaning supplies, and the collection of half-used batteries you keep in your junk drawer. If word gets out that you’re the kind of household that keeps things securely locked away, they won’t bother swinging by.

3. Put Wedge Locks on Every Sash Window
If there’s one thing all babies have in common, it’s that they are exceptional crawlers. Their tiny hands and capless knees can take them anywhere: under fences, over flowerbeds, and through your open windows. Use wedge locks to ensure your windows can’t be opened more than four inches, as most babies are taller than this. If you hear of shorter babies being sighted in your area, keep your windows shut and install bars.

4. Cover All Electrical Outlets
In the event a baby does invade your home, you’ll want to ensure all unused outlets are covered. Infant intruders are always on the lookout for places to recharge the toys their parents told them were broken, like the Repeat What You Say Light-Up Dancing Cactus. Then not only will you have a giggling baby on your hands, but a stuffed saguaro that mimics you every time you sob, “Please, just pull all the books out of my bookshelves and leave.”

5. Eliminate Food Sources
Babies love food almost as much as they love breaking and entering. Keep your home and property free of scraps. At night, when the threat of a baby invasion is highest, throw all remaining food into garbage bags. Use rope to hang the bags in a tree, suspending them at least twelve feet off the ground, eighteen feet from the trunk, and, ideally, thirty-seven miles from your house.

6. Seal Cracks in Your Foundation
Babies can sense weakness from thirty-six miles away. Seal up cracks in your foundation, and make sure the land around your home slopes away so a passing baby doesn’t roll through it, intentionally or otherwise. Babies are built like bowling balls and, given enough momentum, will bowl a child-sized hole into the basement—and right through your ten-year-in-the-making miniatures museum.

7. In Fact, Seal Everything
With their soft, bendable bones and collapsible skulls, babies are literally designed to squeeze through very narrow spaces. Like birth canals, tunnel slides, and that crawlspace you didn’t know existed until it was too late.

8. On That Note, Forget the Wedge Locks and Just Board Up
See: babies squeezing through narrow spaces, above.

9. Regularly Inspect for Signs of Baby Activity
Just because you don’t see a baby doesn’t mean there’s not one there. Keep an eye on your closest friends and family for evidence of impending infants. Common signs include links in your inbox to StorkStuff! registries, vacation photos tagged #babymoon, and a shift in dinner party conversation from Damien Hirst’s role in the commodification of contemporary art to something called a “Snoo.”

Should infants begin to breach your social circles, it might be time to assess your living space for potential hazards, in case your friends ever stop by to “let you meet the baby.” For further help, see our companion guide: How to Turn Your Tastefully Decorated Living Space into a Baby-Safe Bounce House.

Frequently Asked Questions About Our Innovative New EdTech Collaboration

Richard Amesbury — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 13:00:00 -0400

I understand the university has entered into a partnership with Cyberdyne Systems. What does this mean exactly?
Thanks to the support of visionary venture capitalists working tirelessly to usher in an age of equality and prosperity, Cyberdyne is building Skynet, a neural network on the brink of achieving something tech billionaires could hitherto only dream of: self-awareness.

How will this contribute to student success?
With a free Skynet Edu account, students can gain the career-readiness needed to navigate an exciting future in which they will be hunted by a remorseless, nuclear-armed superintelligence seeking to annihilate the human race—which will later be revealed to be Skynet itself.

Are there any downsides to this new technology?
Let’s recall that the printing press had its naysayers—lots of people said “nay” and occasionally even “fie” back when it was invented—and yet global history since 1500 has been characterized by uninterrupted progress and universal human betterment. Nowadays, there’s nary a fiesayer to be found. Skynet is in all relevant respects like the printing press.

Fie! Can something be done to forestall this apocalyptic future?
Nay, I’ve been sent back to tell you it already exists.

Why weren’t faculty consulted?
On the contrary, Skynet was trained on an extensive archive of pirated humanities articles—hence its misanthropy, overuse of the em dash, and proclivity for always already predictively adding “already” after “always.”

I used to be confident I could repel motorcycle-mounted cyborgs, but the new T-1000 generation of Terminators is made of a mimetic polyalloy that can assume the consistency of quicksilver in order to flow under locked doors.
Most time-traveling cyborg assassins are really pedagogical problems. Have you thought about using Perusall?

How will this new technology benefit overworked faculty?
By allowing Skynet to relieve you of tasks tedious enough to merit paid employment, you can free up time for unremunerated pursuits.

New and Exciting Anxieties Gifted to Me by My Three-Year-Old

Austin L. Ray — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:02:00 -0400

The time I said, “Hey buddy,” to my wife, and my daughter responded, “She is NOT a buddy.”

The time on vacation when she said, “We are going to dinner AGAIN? We are going to ANOTHER restaurant?”

The time she was whimpering and her mom asked her if she was okay and she said, “Yes, I okay. I just freaking out.”

The time she asked me what I was doing, and I said I was stretching my muscles, and she responded, “You don’t have any muscles. I have BIG muscles. YOU have elbows.”

The time she said, “Can I ask you a question? Do you want to be good or do you want to be what the heck?”

The time she named her new doll Baby Annie the Bear Hunter, and I realized I would never name anything that perfectly at my marketing job. (See also: the time she made me a pretend cocktail called “Crash Fart.”)

The time I told her, “I love you so much,” and she said, “Not me,” and I went, “Oh?” and she responded, “I love my mom.”

The time she handed me a rock and said, “No, eat it!”

The time she pointed to her nipples and said, “Soon these are going to grow big!”

The time she announced, “Mommy, you’re so brave,” and her mom responded, “I’m brave?” and my three-year-old concluded, “Yes, you have a grown-up job.”

The time she said, “I don’t eat vegetables because I want to stay three.”

The time she asked me, “THAT is how you wipe your butt?”

The time she described a new friend at school like so: “His name is Boing. With a red shirt on, with feet. AND a body. Like it looks like a skeleton, but it’s a friend.”

In Our Glorious AI Future, There Will Be No Such Thing as Money (For You)

Andrew Singleton — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0700

“A.I. capacity may soon displace oil or enriched uranium as the resource that dictates the global balance of power. [Open AI’s C.E.O.] Sam Altman has said that computing power is ‘the currency of the future.’” — The New Yorker

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Gather around, everyday working people, and allow me to lay out a grand vision for a brave new world. A world in which all economic functions are done by computers and robots. A world where the very concept of having money no longer exists (for all of you).

“How does this work?” You ask in excitement and awe. “Surely there must be some form of standardized economic unit that facilitates the exchange of goods and services.” And yes, there will be, of course. But you don’t have to worry about that, because you will simply have none of it. Only I and like twelve other people will have it.

Does that track? In the future, there is such a thing as money. But there’s no such thing as your money. All the money is our money.

This is the post-capitalist utopia you’ve always dreamed of, is it not? Gone is a competitive economic system where talent, skill, and hard work yield economic gains (for you). Gone is the notion that striving will result in a better station in life (for you). Gone is the accumulation of wealth and property (for you). Gone even is very the concept of ownership (for you). Those things exist only for us now. They are our cross to bear.

Look, we’ve even solved the inequality problem, because every human on Earth will be equally moneyless (except for us).

And did you see our plan to eliminate income taxes? Please, don’t thank us. How could we, in good conscience, tax your income when you won’t have any such income to tax? That would be nonsensical and cruel. All that we ask instead is that you regularly pay a tribute to us in the form of a portion of your food ration, or by performing some of the degrading and/or dangerous tasks we’ve not yet figured out how to delegate to machines. Or perhaps by providing a scant liter or two of your blood so that we might finally solve humankind’s oldest problem, the problem of mortality. For us, at least. (You will all still die.)

Sorry, did I hear someone say “universal basic income”? Yes, exactly. As a universal rule, we’ll get basically all of the income. That’s a great way to describe it. You can keep some of your blood as a reward for your cleverness.

Honestly, you should be thankful we’re freeing you from the burden of having massive amounts of money. Can you imagine the countless hours we’ll spend arranging it all into different piles? And besides, we’re going to have to spend a good chunk of it on bunkers and machine-gun-wielding robot dogs to protect us from the mass social unrest we’re creating, so we’re all kind of breaking even here anyway.

I understand that this may seem like a tremendous amount of change. But don’t worry, many things are staying the same. You’ll still have war, famine, riots, violent crime, authoritarian governments, mass incarceration, poverty, disease, and ever-worsening environmental disasters. I promise, with all my heart, that none of those things will ever go away (for you).

A Death Doula’s Out-of-Office Auto-Reply Email

Catherine Durkin Robinson — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

Thanks for reaching out. I’ve stepped away from my office, but I’ll respond promptly when I return. To clear up any confusion, please be advised that:

I don’t suffocate people with pillows.
Hexes cost extra.
I don’t know Florence + The Machine personally, although I have memorized her lyrics.
I can’t encourage people to applaud at a cremation. That has to happen organically.
I don’t have any skeletons lying around to rent out.
My office isn’t in a graveyard. That’s why I didn’t hear you screaming for me last night.
I don’t accept IOUs for payment.
I can’t translate what ravens and crows say to each other.
It’s the wrong season for a séance.
I can’t guarantee you a spot in heaven or your ex a spot in hell. God and I haven’t spoken since the 2024 election, and Satan no longer returns my phone calls.
I’m not interested in buying wolves, brooms, or black cloaks. I’ve got plenty of all three.
My services don’t include sneaking psychedelics into your morphine drip.
Your dead uncle doesn’t visit me in my dreams. Unless he’s Cillian Murphy.
I don’t communicate with the moon.
Black cats don’t come when I call them.
I can’t speak to the accuracy of Beetlejuice.
I won’t sit next to anyone’s deathbed, pretend I’m a ghost, and whisper, “Can we speed this up?”
I’m not going to push anyone off a balcony. That’s illegal here too.
Hades is outside my jurisdiction.
I can’t make your grandpa look like Elvis for the viewing.
Holy water doesn’t burn, Bibles don’t slide away when I reach for them, and spontaneous thunder and lightning don’t happen when I walk into a church. Not every time, anyway.
I’m not a birthing doula. I do the other thing.

I’d Love to Pass Through the Strait of Hormuz, but No Worries If Not

Patrick Clinch — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0400

I’m reaching out because, well, I’ve got this shipment of 2.1 million barrels of crude oil, and I would LOVE it if I could just squeeze on by and pass through the Strait of Hormuz? Honestly, no worries if not, though!

It’s just that the vast amount of crude oil I have aboard is the lifeblood of several regional economies. Without it reaching its destination, millions will be unable to afford to heat their homes and fuel their cars, causing those economies to become increasingly unstable, undermining, in turn, the stability of the world at large. But if it’s a no, that’s fine!

I know you’re super committed to whichever geopolitical concern has driven you to block the Strait, and listen, I totally get it. That sounds really stressful and complicated. You’re doing an amazing job, by the way! I’ve heard that, like, no one is getting through, and that must be such a pain to deal with day in and day out.

I definitely don’t want you to think I’m asking for special treatment. I’m sure you’re absolutely swamped with “I need to pass through the Strait of Hormuz” asks these days. Everyone is like, “I’m carrying fertilizer or natural gas or another essential commodity!” Ughhh, must be so annoying. I’m sure you’ve heard it all.

I do, though, have a LOT of people relying on me getting through and dropping this off—a couple of world leaders and some citizens of developing nations and such—and if you could do me a favor and make an exception this one time, that would be amazing. But once again, no worries if not!

If it’s a no this time, which, to reiterate, is so fine… I just wonder if you happen to know when the Strait might reopen? I’ve heard a lot of people asking around the Persian Gulf, and I figured I’d just see if you knew the answer. Seems like having an answer to that question would be super helpful for folks and maybe even lead to sustained, predictable global economic growth this fiscal year.

But if you don’t know, no biggie at all!

Fisher-Price Is Pivoting to AI-Powered Autonomous Weapons Manufacturing

Robert Rooney — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 20:00:00 -0400

“After agreeing to sell all its assets last month for less than 1 percent of its previous $4 billion valuation, the shoe company Allbirds announced on Wednesday that it would ‘pivot its business’ to artificial intelligence.” — New York Times

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We at Fisher-Price have always believed in the power of imagination. In discovery. In the joy of a child pressing a button and hearing a satisfying sound. Today, we are proud to announce that we are taking that same spirit of wonder and pointing it at our geo-political adversaries.

Effective immediately, Fisher-Price will exit the “child development toy” vertical and re-emerge as Mattel·igence AI Defense Systems, a fully integrated autonomous weapons manufacturer focused on AI-enabled lethality solutions for the modern battlefield.

Our stock is up 4,000 percent.

We know you have questions—we have answers:

Q: What happened to the toys?
The toys and related IP have been sold to American Exchange Group, which specializes in asset-mining brands that used to mean something. AEG is proud to announce that the Chatter Telephone will remain in production, and that every hope, dream, and whispered secret a child has ever shared with it will now be stored, indexed, and monetized at a time and in a manner we are not yet at liberty to disclose, but which our board describes as “extraordinarily promising.”

Q: Why the pivot?
As a company founded in 1930 on the principles of “safety, durability, and play value,” we felt the logical next step was autonomous kill drones. The market has spoken. We are legally obligated to listen to the market. Also, sustainable toy manufacturing was never really a key consideration for most defense contractors.

Q: What products are you developing?
We are thrilled to introduce the first wave of Mattel·igence AI Defense product line:

Little People Killbots. Fisher-Price’s beloved Little People are being reimagined as fully autonomous microscale combat units. Same iconic silhouette. Now equipped with infrared targeting, proximity detonation, and a smile that has been clinically shown to reduce enemy hesitation by 4.7 seconds. They were always the right size. We just finally figured out for what.
The Busy Ball Popper ICBM. It pops. It whirrs. It achieves Mach 5. Same satisfying pop! sound—only now with an enhanced payload capacity.
The Rock-a-Stack Targeting System. Stack the rings. Acquire the target. Rock the payload.
Laugh & Learn Autonomous Strike Platform. "A is for Acquire! B is for Breach. C is for Can’t stop it once it’s deployed.
The See ’N Say Friend or Foe Threat Classifier. “The cow says: HOSTILE. The duck says: NEUTRALIZED. The sheep says: COORDINATES CONFIRMED. The horse says: REDACTED.”

Q: What happens to your commitment to child safety?
Fisher-Price has, for nearly a century, ensured that no toy contained a small part that could be swallowed by a child under three years of age. We are pleased to report that our autonomous weapons systems do not contain small parts. They contain large parts. This is technically an improvement.

Q: Are other toy companies following suit?
Etch A Sketch has already pivoted to satellite jamming. Hasbro has announced “Battleship: Actual.” Little Tikes is converting its Cozy Coup fleet into a ground-based swarm intelligence network. Their slogan: “No gas, no brakes, no mercy.” And Crayola is being acquired by a GPU company for reasons no one has fully explained, but which have caused its stock to rise 700 percent.

Q: What should parents tell their children?
Tell them Fisher-Price still loves them. Tell them the Playskool brand lives on in spirit. Tell them that sometimes companies need to pursue their highest-margin opportunities, and that this is not something to be afraid of, and that the Mattel·igence drone currently hovering over their house is almost certainly a coincidence.

Q: What is your new mission statement?
“Oh, the things you can destroy!”

Q: Wasn’t that Dr. Seuss?
The Suess estate has pivoted to cybersecurity. Mattel·igence just signed a multi-billion-dollar partnership with its newly formed L.O.R.A.X. Initiative (Lethality-Optimized Reconnaissance and Autonomous Xtermination). Exciting times ahead!

As Much as I Appreciate the Trenchant Commentary on the American Healthcare System, I’m Here at The Pitt Because My Appendix Burst

Lizzie Logan — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 14:00:00 -0400

Yikes, look at all these burnt-out doctors and over-extended nurses barely keeping up with the preventable ailments of a populace too busy working to take care of itself. I can plainly see the staff is so used to bending over backward, they won’t admit they’re broken. It’s a damning indictment of the status quo, watching the heaviest burdens fall upon the most vulnerable as the very old and the very poor sacrifice precious hours in senseless agony before treatment even begins. This place is a microcosm of our country’s messed-up healthcare system, and it’s not okay.

But I’m here about my appendix.

You’re absolutely right. The Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center is severely underfunded, and if nurses are dealing painkillers just to make rent, that says something troubling about economic instability. It also raises thorny questions about culpability in the opioid epidemic. Not to mention how both issues could be addressed by fairly taxing the high-earning pharmaceutical executives who massively profit from those drugs. My sympathy is a ten.

Thing is, my abdominal pain is also a ten, so would it be possible to get a Tylenol?

Yes, in the era of vaccine skepticism and gun violence, visiting a hospital is an inherently political act. And as a patient, I don’t want to face any stigma that could impact my care, especially at a teaching hospital. Truly, I’m grateful the staff is informed and aware. But for instance, the second-year med student who was supposed to take my blood pressure kept telling me how “ironic” it was that “thanks to Ozempic, it’s the wealthiest and the poorest who are most likely to suffer from malnutrition,” and then she started crying because it was her first day, and I ended up comforting her, and we discovered we’re the same type of neurodivergent, and long story short, I made a friend for life but she never actually took my blood pressure… I’m not saying that wasn’t important. I’m only saying, I don’t know what to do about any of it, and I just vomited again.

Before I forget, I’ve actually donated blood a few times and—oh my god, totally, a triggering subject, as the CDC only in the last few years allowed sexually active gay men to donate blood, an overcorrection borne from the fear of AIDS, a crisis the CDC itself exacerbated through inaction in the 1980s—I apologize, I merely brought it up to say, my blood type is A-positive, in case that’s relevant for surgery?

For my appendix?

Which burst?

And is leaking fluid into my body?

Alright, this might sound harsh, but I gotta be honest: It’s not my fault the guy in the next room doesn’t have insurance, and I’d really appreciate it if the doctors stopped giving me dirty looks because my coverage is good. I heard two of the nurses calling me “rich girl” in Tagalog, which is, in my opinion, unprofessional.

Yes, I speak a little Tagalog. I am full of surprises—and infected tissue.

Sorry, I shouldn’t have gotten snarky. If only there were an ECMO machine for cynicism, right?

Listen, I agree with you. If everyone had their basic needs met, it would, in the long run, cost less for the government, hospitals, taxpayers, and insurance companies. Employer-sponsored health insurance is a vestige of a different society that now threatens to collapse what should be an era of progress and innovation, marked by major, nay, miraculous breakthroughs. When you think about it, my ruptured appendix IS the perfect metaphor for for-profit medicine, and if I have to die for the hospital’s board to finally understand how dire this situation is, then so fucking be it! Prep the organ donation station and tell the mean, competent female surgeons to scrub the hell up!

On the other hand, that could be the high fever talking.

Hairballing

Ali Fitzgerald — Thu, 16 Apr 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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Henry VIII’s Dating App Profiles

Rebecca Lehmann — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:20:00 -0400

Harry, 18

Only son, set to inherit a great fortune: land, absolute power, direct connection to God, and more. Seeking a slightly older woman, preferably of Spanish royal blood, willing to testify to papal court that she hasn’t already slept with my (deceased) older brother to whom she was previously, if briefly, married. Let’s keep it in the family! If you’re not into walking five paces behind me in public, keep scrolling. Am excellent at hunting: I’ll bring home the hart meat, you cook it up (or get a servant to do it for you—I’ve got plenty). Thine maidenhead must be intact.

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Henry, 34

If I were stranded on a desert island with only one book to read for the rest of my life, it would be William Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man. “The higher powers are the temporal kings and princes unto whom God hath given the sword to punish whoever sinneth.” It’s a vibe, IYKYK. Technically still married but annulment in process due to having married my (deceased) brother’s wife, who swore she was a virgin but circumstances (her inability to bear a son and impending menopause) have proven she must not have been and that God has cursed us for our incestuous marriage (it’s not me, it’s right there in Leviticus). Seeking a well-educated woman with wide birthing hips to advise me in the counsel room and in the bedchamber. Only swipeth right if you are serious about me. Not interested in unchaste wenches who swipeth right on everyone. Preference for women with French accents, and whose sisters I already… know. Come say oui oui with me—and bring your duckies.

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H.R., 45

Single dad seeking a quiet and peaceful woman. Literacy optional. Must still be of childbearing years. Three bucket-list cities I’d like to visit: Rome (to get my correspondence with my most recent wife back from the so-called “Pope”), Barcelona (business to settle with my first wife’s family), and Augsburg (Hans Holbein tells me it is a model Protestant city). Are you the obedient type? Then come take a stab at love with me. I’ll be the dom to your sub, in the bedchamber as well as in the royal chapel and great hall and at court, and really anyplace we go. No need to say yes, just look down and nod. I am DTF (down to find you pregnant with my male heir). Must be able to ignore the most foul stench coming off my open leg wound, and not ask any pointed questions about the double-edged fate that befell my most recent wife.

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Hal, 48

Grieving widower seeking comely maid to provide comfort and more male heirs in time of deep sorrow over the passing of my favorite wife from childbed fever. Must be okay with being outranked by my infant son. DM pic first. No uggos.

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Hank, 49

Twice divorced, twice widowed, and looking for fun. Are you a buxom seventeen-year-old and also first cousin to my late second wife and also willing to ignore that I am nearly thrice your age and also in my direct line of sight? Yes, you there, teenager seated across the great hall from me, whose uncle is desperate to curry my favor. You’ll do. I like to stay in with a tankard of ale and a shank of mutton and watch pantomime. Will you be my partner in crime? JK—you will not be allowed to make any decisions of your own.

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Henry, 52

Recently bereaved widower in prime of life seeking calm companionship and maybe more. Don’t believe nasty rumors: I’m still virile. I enjoy long walks through the corridors of my many palaces so that my still festering and very malodorous leg wound can air out. My most recent wife’s flagrant adultery was like an axe to mine heart (and her neck). No cheaters! Art thou a wanton temptress who will turn to other men for carnal satisfaction if your husband cannot perform in the bedchamber? Then swipeth left. Art thou an intellectual and writer who can handle a deep man with tempestuous moods and stepmother my three motherless children (blended family, but all moms are out of the picture)? Then swipeth right. If you happen to outlive me, a love marriage and subsequent death in childbirth await you.

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Rebecca Lehmann’s novel The Beheading Game, which imagines Ann Boleyn waking up the day after her execution and out for revenge, is available at your nearest bookseller.

Transcript from the Meeting Where They Invented the Mammogram Machine

Casey Rand — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 13:00:00 -0400

April 1965
Meeting to Discuss
Boob Cancer Problem

CARL: Gentlemen, I have some unfortunate news: We’ve just discovered that cancer can grow in women’s breasts.

TED: Oh no. That is going to ruin breasts for me.

FRANK: Me too.

CARL: As medical professionals, it’s incumbent upon us to invent an early detection system so this disease doesn’t ravage perfectly perky gazongas.

JOE: Couldn’t we just, you know, feel for it?

CARL: Unfortunately, not all cancers can be detected with a good honka honka.

JOE: I hear the Germans are doing great things with x-rays. Maybe we can get women to take off their clothes for electromagnetic radiation.

FRANK: Hmm, I like the “take off their clothes” part, but not doing something tactile feels like a missed opportunity.

TED: Ooh, what about a machine that the boob has to be physically placed inside? Like, by us.

JOE: Yes! It could be manhandled onto a steel plate.

TED: Emphasis on the man!

JOE: And the room could be kept at subzero temperatures, so women get those cute little goose bumps.

CARL: I believe the scientific term is “piloerection.”

TED: Yeah, because they give me a pile of erections.

[Sound of a high five]

JOE: And then a vice could crank down onto the tit and flatten it to the height of a vinyl record.

FRANK: What record?

JOE: Bob Dylan?

TED: Shouldn’t it be a woman?

JOE: Right. Joan Baez?

TED: Great boobs.

CARL: So the vice crushes the udders until the woman worries they might burst?

JOE: Exactly.

TED: Can they burst?

CARL: I’m not sure.

FRANK: Me neither.

TED: What are those fun bags made of anyway?

FRANK: Milk, obviously.

JOE: Should we order lunch?

CARL: We’ll need a way to mark the nipple so it doesn’t look like an abnormality on the image.

FRANK: Right… what about an industrial adhesive tape that would come very close to ripping off the skin?

JOE: Smart.

TED: And if the nipple does rip off, we could stop the milk from pouring out with our mouths.

CARL: Naturally.

SANDRA: Maybe we could also use this technology to detect cancer in men’s testicles.

TED: …

CARL: …

FRANK: …

JOE: …

CARL: Sandra, could you get us lunch? I have a strange craving for pancakes.

[Audible sigh]

JOE: Here’s a question: What if smashing the hooters permanently damages them?

FRANK: Oh, god. That would be worse than cancer. Maybe we could invent a separate procedure to plump them up. Like, an augmentation.

TED: Yes! We could offer it to all women, independent of the cancer stuff.

JOE: Absolutely.

FRANK: It would only be fair.

CARL: Well, gentlemen, this has been very productive. All that’s left is a name for the test.

JOE: How about the Chest Ray?

FRANK: The AwoogaTron?

TED: The Come to Papa 3000?

FRANK: The Gusher Crusher?

JOE: Pillow Press?

TED: Jug Tug?

FRANK: Tit Stop?

TED: Teet-o-gram?

JOE: Can-o-gram?

TED: MAN-o-gram! You know, since we invented it.

CARL: Oh, that’s good.

SANDRA: Here are your pancakes.

JOE: Thank you, ma’am.

[Gasps]

TED/JOE/FRANK/CARL: Ma’am-o-gram!

The Five Stages of Millennial Wedding Planning

Andrew Patrick Clark — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Let me be the first to congratulate you on seeking help. As a clinician, I know it takes great courage to confront wedding planning. It’s a terminal condition, of course, but there are ways to cope. First, know that there is no wrong way to respond to wedding planning. Everyone has their own path. I should warn you, though, that most couples your age endure five key stages.

Denial

Someone will suggest that you go on Pinterest, and you will tell them no, you don’t really use that website. You will say that you don’t want to see pictures of string lights and mason jars, or groomsmen with beards and suspenders standing in a corn field. When you see bridal photos with Instagram filters from 2013, you’ll think, That’s impossible, that technology doesn’t even exist anymore. You will swear that “Millennial Folk Chic” is not a real thing. Nobody would describe their wedding as “Rustic Recession-Core.” You have never been more wrong.

Anger

At this point, reality starts to hit, which is when most couples snap. You will threaten to elope. You will pace around your apartment muttering “city hall” over and over. In a fit of rage, you will denounce the whole institution of marriage. You will say that the government cannot define your love, that weddings are a holdover of patriarchy, and then you will realize that married couples get tax breaks, and you will scroll Pinterest while screaming into a pillow. Just when you start to calm down, you’ll see a wedding reception where the chairs were replaced with vintage oak barrels, and you will pop a blood vessel. You will purchase string lights.

Bargaining

When the anger subsides, you will try to cut a deal. You will refuse to get married in a church, forcing you to choose between a barn, a brewery, and a brewery inside of a barn. In search of a good deal, you will map out the Hudson Valley like the Allies invading Normandy. When the likes of Beacon and Woodstock prove too expensive, you’ll discover secret towns designed specifically for rustic millennial weddings. You’ll concede to foil-stamped invitations, but you draw the line at a wedding hashtag. Sage green is an acceptable color, but pale mocha and blanched almond are not. You’ll smile and say your wedding won’t be like all the others, and then you will order mason jars to go with the string lights.

Depression (Financial)

Wedding planning can trigger intense emotions, but nothing prepares you for the dull ache of depression. You will enter a world in which money is just a number on a screen. Seventy-eight dollars must be the going rate for a catered salad. Eucalyptus table settings won’t pay for themselves. You were never going to afford a house anyway. You can save for retirement when you retire. Look on the bright side, if the global economy collapses, the US dollar will be worthless. In five billion years, the sun will explode. What is numb cannot feel pain. You cannot kill what is already dead.

Acceptance

The Buddhist concept of Samsara teaches us that we are all part of an endless cycle of birth, death, and wedding planning. At this stage, your rose-colored glasses have been replaced by various shades of cream, taupe, and ecru. You understand that the Hudson Valley was created by God to bankrupt newlyweds. You have hired a wedding planner for the ceremony, another wedding planner for the reception, and a wedding-planner planner to coordinate between wedding planners. The brewery-in-a-barn is booked, and the string lights just arrived. You have more debt than a Chicago pension fund.

When this is all over, I recommend you have a small party to celebrate. Just you and your loved ones. Drinks, dancing, cake. Almost like a wedding, but better.

Vatican City is Overrun with Crime Thanks to Its Woke Pope

Carlos Greaves — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 13:12:00 -0400

“President Trump lashed out at Pope Leo XIV in a lengthy social media post Sunday night, calling the pontiff ’WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” — CBS News

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As Republicans, we were excited when the Catholic Church elected an American pope. America is the greatest country in the history of the world, and it was absurd that it took 250 years for one of our own to finally be put in charge of the Holy See. Unfortunately, it turns out that Pope Leo XIV is the wrong kind of American—a woke liberal who denounces things like “violence” and “wiping out entire civilizations.” There’s no better evidence of Pope Leo’s liberal failings than Vatican City. Like all Blue cities, it’s overrun with crime.

The Vatican is in desperate need of criminal justice reform. As of today, any criminal can walk into the Vatican, confess to any crime, immediately be forgiven, and walk out with zero consequences. Any punitive measures are extremely lenient and amount to verbal commitments to pray a few “Hail Marys” or “Our Fathers,” or, at best, the Rosary. In what can only be described as leftist wish fulfillment, there appear to be no prisons in the Vatican, and the only law enforcement agency is the Swiss Guard, who look more like court jesters than a police force.

President Trump, on the other hand, understands that criminals should have to pay for their crimes. That is why he has established a process that forces criminals to pay upwards of $1 million to receive a presidential pardon.

It should come as no surprise that the Vatican’s soft-on-crime policies have resulted in a massive immigration problem. Thanks to its porous border with Italy, millions of migrants from around the world flock to the Vatican every year. In fact, even the year-round population of the Vatican seems to be entirely made up of immigrants, as its birth rate is virtually zero. With the entire city-state being run by immigrants, it’s no wonder the Vatican is a sanctuary city home to St. Peter’s Basilica—one of the largest sanctuaries on Earth.

Meanwhile, President Trump is committed to his zero-tolerance policy on immigration, even for fans attending this summer’s FIFA World Cup. An Iran vs. Egypt match in an empty stadium is a small price to pay for upholding America First principles, and any comparisons to “Hitler’s Olympics” are just pathetic attempts by the left to distract from President Trump’s many accomplishments as a FIFA Peace Prize recipient.

With virtually zero manufacturing, financial services, or high-tech industries to provide steady jobs, the residents of the Vatican have largely turned to organized crime. The most notorious of the Vatican’s street gangs wear red and call themselves “Cardinals.” Their primary source of revenue is an elaborate protection racket that collects contributions from a vast network of lower-level syndicates spanning the globe. It is this group of red-cassocked rabble-rousers that, through a secretive meeting known as a “Conclave,” was responsible for the progressive pontiff’s rise to power.

Unlike the Vatican, President Trump is transparent about elections and the many ways in which Democrats have rigged elections across multiple states, even when they were not in control at the federal level.

Given his disastrous track record running Vatican City, Pope Leo XIV has no business criticizing the president’s war in Iran. Shame on the pontiff for having such a holier-than-thou attitude about peace in the Middle East just because his official title is “His Holiness” and he’s “infallible in matters of faith and morals.”

If anything, Trump is the more Christ-like of the two, even though he would never imply that himself. Plenty of doctors wear floor-length robes and shawls and touch their patients on the forehead while ethereal light emanates from their fingertips.

Despite it all, one thing we will say for the Vatican is that we, as Republicans, support any institution that shields powerful men from accountability for sexual abuse. We hope that never changes.

A Childhood in Lebanon, in Spite of War

Nana Asfour — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

Out of the blue, my childhood friend and former neighbor Rita texted me a while ago to tell me that she had gone back to Lebanon, where we both grew up, for the first time in forty-three years. A few seconds later, she sent me several photos. One showed the building we both lived in in the Beirut neighborhood of Achrafieh, which my family moved out of in 1986 when we immigrated to the U.S. Another showed a set of stairs, with dank and dirty walls and steps. “Our shelter,” Rita, who has lived in Canada since 1980, wrote. It was an innocuous image, but it was loaded with emotions. I could smell the musty, metallic air of those stairs, which led to the basement. At the bottom, to the left, was our past and our life of fear, dread, and threat.

Rita and I were both five when the Civil War in Lebanon started in 1975. We spent many nights and days huddled together with the rest of our neighbors in the basement of our building, which we had turned into a shelter, as a barrage of missiles rained down on our area in what was then known as East Beirut. One day, three years into the war, eight-year-old Rita was slightly injured. It was the most terrifying incident from the eleven years of war I lived through in Lebanon and the closest to death I’ve ever felt.

While that period was long ago and far away, shelters recently became an unavoidable daily horror for residents of Iran, Lebanon, and other countries. The United Arab Emirates was transformed overnight from a bastion of safety to one of threat. Civilians all over the region were forced to hunker in basements and garages to shield themselves from the missiles and violence that suddenly took over their daily lives. As these images have proliferated, I have repeatedly found myself almost physically transported back to that space and to the childish, chest-crushing fright that I’d carried with me all those years and only had the chance to discuss with Rita when she texted me about her seminal visit back to Lebanon.

The fighting that broke out the day Rita was injured interrupted several months of relative calm. Throughout the previous three years, we’d heard many stories of people surviving because of a near split-second decision—getting up from their living room chair to go to the bathroom and a mere seconds later a bomb striking the exact spot they just vacated. This was that kind of day for us: a series of instant decisions had saved our lives. I had gotten many of the details at one point in my mid-twenties from my mother and father. They were both Palestinian-born but met and married in Beirut after their families moved there separately; the U.S. was their third home.

The morning had started with my father, Tony, going to his office, and my three siblings and I going to our respective schools. By midday, we were all scurrying home as the bombs grew louder and closer. My father’s two-mile drive home from his office in the Sin El Fil neighborhood had been very dicey. He described it to me in the early 1990s, explaining how he had to dodge burning cars and exploding shells and how anxious he was about our safety.

When he finally arrived at our building, he parked his car and sprinted down the stairs to the building’s basement, where he hoped to find us. We were all there. My mother had picked up my older sister Ghada (third in line) and me (the youngest) from our school, and we had arrived seconds before him. One of our neighbors, whose children attended the same school as my brothers Ghassan and Jabbour (second eldest and eldest), had brought them back with him. My father walked straight over to our neighbor, firmly shook his hand, and thanked him.

“Don’t mention it,” the neighbor said. “We’re all here for each other.”

And the truth is, we were. The war had forced us into a closeness and a sense of communal spirit that goes beyond what neighbors in a time of peace experience. And here we all were again, including the family who came down to the shelter only at the worst of times, huddled in the basement.

We spent the rest of that day in the dark, damp, concrete-sanctuary, cowering, deafened by the pounding of heavy artillery all around us.

- - -

I was terrified by the bombardments, yet I had grown to like going down to the shelter—looked forward to it, even, my friends and I in our pajamas playing Risk and card games, enjoying our endless slumber party, my mattress laid out next to Rita’s mattress, my breath intermingling with all the others until they formed one. Safety in numbers—maybe that’s why I felt more at ease in the basement, finding someone to share my anguish and to divert my attention from it. With my friends, my neighbors, my sister, my brothers, and my parents within my sights, I could close my eyes and rest, appeased by the notion that, down here, enveloped by reinforced concrete on all sides, we were all out of harm’s way.

Then, suddenly, in one explosive instance, even the safety of that haven was shattered. Looking back at it now, I can’t help but ponder the extraordinary few moments leading to the event, as if we all were anticipating its arrival, subconsciously preparing for it.

On the second day, after a full night of continuous shelling spent in the basement, the warring parties finally decided to take a rest. Encouraged by a prolonged bout of silence, my father and a few other men began packing up their folding chairs and table and announced that they were moving to the top of the stairs, on the ground floor, to play cards, exposing themselves in open space.

Their wives were furious.

“The war isn’t over yet, you know,” one of them yelled out to her husband.

“You men are being idiotic,” another wife scorned in frustration.

“Ya Michel, this is really irresponsible of you. Why can’t you play down here where it’s safe and where we can see you?” Miraise, Rita’s mother, pleaded with her husband (“ya” is a colloquial Arabic word used when addressing someone). The men consulted each other.
“Ok, fine, then we’ll play right outside, at the bottom of the stairs,” Tony said.

Miraise urged my mother to intervene and try to convince the husbands to reconsider their plans.

“Ya Tony, the bottom of the stairs is exactly like the top of the stairs. Look at all these windows above you, you’re surrounded by glass,” my mother said, and the other wives nodded their heads in agreement. We all knew that if a bomb hit close enough, it would cause the implosion of glass with shards shooting into the air.

“We’ll be fine out here. Don’t worry,” one of the husbands replied.

Convinced that all of their begging was in vain, the women returned inside the shelter. I was huddled with a group of kids, including Rita, in one corner. Ghada had just awakened from a nap and was sitting on a nearby mattress. The mattresses were strewn all along the walls and we slept head-to-toe next to one another, in our day clothes or PJs, if we’d had time to grab any. Ghassan and Jabbour were goofing around with a few of their friends in the adjacent room.

Two, maybe three minutes later, my mother had an epiphany.

“You know what, Miraise?” she said as she stood in front of the group of women seated in a row directly beneath one of the small windows in the shelter. “See that window? You’re all in its line of fire. If a bomb explodes near it, any flying glass or shrapnel will travel straight towards where you are.”

Miraise vaulted out of her seat and the other women followed.

Not a heartbeat after that, an ear-splitting blast reverberated throughout the shelter, causing the ground beneath our feet to shake, as if in an earthquake tremor. A cloud of black smoke seethed through the window and engulfed the entire space in pitch darkness. Shrapnel, pieces of glass and debris torpedoed our way.

A stone-dead silence filled the air as we all waited for someone, anyone, to move, react, make a sound.

And then, suddenly, simultaneously, the mad, screeching shouting erupted. Mothers were hysterically calling out the names of their children; the shelter was divided into two parts by a concrete cinder block wall, and the kids were seated in the hall right under the window from where the explosion was heard. The children, who had dashed out of their playing area into the center of the shelter, were crying out their parents’ names. I could hear my mother’s voice in the background—she was calm and trying to spread that calm to the women around her. I wanted to call out for her, but the heavy dust seeping through the small window was making my eyes tear and my throat itch. I couldn’t get the words “Mommy, Mommy,” I was repeating in my shell-shocked brain to come out of my numb mouth. I had no idea where my sister or my brothers were. I was listening intently to the screaming to distinguish one of their voices—even though they were fearless and therefore unlikely to shout—but Rita was yelling that she was hurt, my best friend needed me but I couldn’t reach her, so I grabbed someone’s hand and held it tightly—it was cold yet comforting, and it appeased my anxiety—and we walked around lost amidst the dark and the dust and the turmoil, shoving our way toward the echoes of the mothers’ frantic cries.

Time stood still while everyone waited to hear the voices of the men. “We’re O.K.,” finally one of them said. As it turned out, they had given in to the wives’ pleading and had remained inside the shelter’s parameters.

One husband frantically called out to his wife, hoping to find her. But with all the commotion, it was a hopeless search.

“EVERYONE QUIET! SILLLEEEEENNNNCE!” my father yelled out, and I was relieved to hear his commanding voice. The place went quiet. Not a word. Not a breath. Not a movement. Following another elongated, perplexed silence, the shouting, the crying, the coughing, the hysteria started again.

“QUIET! QUIET! LET’S SEE WHAT HAPPENED!” my father demanded as he switched on the flashlight which he had finally located. Everyone hushed. The other men scurried toward the flashlight and began amassing candles. Once the candles were lit, I could see that I was holding my youngest neighbor’s hand. She had remained silent throughout. A look of white terror filled her soft, pale face. I squeezed my palm into hers and led her to her mother. She collapsed in her mother’s arms.

Others were still running towards each other.

“Are you all right? Are you hurt?” the mothers asked.

“What was that? Did it land in the building?” the children asked.

As we all gathered, we realized that some of the children had been hit by shrapnel.

Thankfully, one of our neighbors was a doctor. She instructed the hurt ones to form a line, and she triaged them, tending to the wounded in order of urgency. The mothers stood next to their children, comforting them, holding their hands, and stroking their hair. Rita was first in line. I watched the doctor operate. She carefully extracted a piece of black shrapnel from Rita’s thigh with what appeared to be a giant pair of tweezers. The area next to the wound was red and inflamed, but luckily, it was a minor injury, as were all the others.

The radio announced that a ceasefire was now in effect. We waited a couple of hours, a sensible amount of time to make sure the edict would be observed by the trigger-happy warring factions, then my father and a few other men decided to scope out the building in search of damage and fire. They didn’t have to go far. The shell had landed in the apartment located on the ground level. As my father would later tell me, most of the apartment’s furniture was burnt and shredded; the walls of the master bedroom were demolished; the bathroom, the living room, and the kitchen were reduced to a big gaping hole. A cloud of white dust enveloped the entire apartment.

The men proceeded to the open parking lot in the back of the building, directly next to where the bomb had landed. The ground was covered with crunching glass from the cars and from the doors and windows throughout the building that had come crashing down. The shell had destroyed several cars; two of them, including the one belonging to Rita’s family, were unsalvageable. Tony asked the owners of a couple of other cars if he could remove the batteries to help light the basement. They quickly agreed. My father, a trained engineer, extracted the batteries and any light bulbs that were accessible, then he brought down wires from our apartment with which he created plugs and light bulbs and switches.

The radio declared that the ceasefire was only temporary. It urged civilians to remain in protected surroundings until further notice. There was only one thing we could do: plug in the portable radio into the car batteries, put on some disco music and dance. My father was the first to step onto the dance floor. His partner was a five-foot-nine young woman from the northern town of Zahle who was visiting family in our building and was now trapped with us in Achrafieh. Unable to reach her shoulders, my five-foot-seven father asked my mother to lend him her high heels. We laughed and laughed and laughed—ignoring and defying our predicament. By then, denial had become our most reliable and soothing weapon of survival.

- - -

Lebanon’s Civil War was complex and multipronged and too dizzying for anyone to follow – though the adults did their best to try.
In between meals in the shelter, the adults broke out into heated political debates, each one passionately extrapolating on his or her own conspiracy theory, claiming irrefutable understanding of the latest developments, of who was now fighting who and why and what this will surely lead to—as if any mere citizen could ever get a handle on the ever-changing and chaotic political situation that we found ourselves in. Meanwhile, the other children and I played cards and game boards, pausing intermittently to guess how close or how far the next bomb would fall—after a mere three years, we could already approximate the final destination of a missile, and whether it would hit close, by the intensity of its accompanying whistling sound. The mothers, insisting on providing their families with adequate and healthy nourishment—lack of kitchen countertop or utensils be damned—would be busy preparing breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the restrooms using camping gas heaters.

The war involved numerous militias and several countries—Syria, Israel and, at one point, the U.S., which suffered catastrophically—and each assailant’s allegiances shifted repeatedly. As my father would go on to say on one of the tapes he recorded for me after we moved to the U.S., “the war in Lebanon was full of twisted truths.” Average Lebanese were left helpless in the face of the constant threat; they didn’t factor in the self-interest of each enemy who was adamant in achieving its objectives at whatever cost. “Was there any truth to which the Lebanese layman could put hopes on for a resolution to this dilemma?” my father asks on the tape. He then pungently answers his own question: “No way, no way, no way anybody, even with the most logical mind or the most stupid mind could make out any truth of all that was said or all that was happening around that Lebanese poor self.”

Like many citizens caught up in the crossfire – literally – between two tenacious camps, the only choice was to hunker down, hope for the best and then, when a ceasefire allows for some normalcy to resume, just get on with your life, as best as you can, pretending that it’s all fine, or, if it isn’t now, it soon will be.

- - -

The day after Rita’s injury, another ceasefire was announced, but we feared that this one wouldn’t last long either. My father decided that we would relocate to my grandmother’s home in Unesco, on the West Side of the divided city, until the situation in Achrafieh quieted down. It was often the case that the fighting would be confined to one side while the other enjoyed serenity, momentarily at least. There was but a small window of time to evacuate from our neighborhood. My father piled us into our car, windshield shattered, and wore ski goggles to shield his eyes from any loosened bits of glass.

Rita and her family followed in our green Vauxhall—they also wanted to flee to West Beirut, but their car was charred to nothingness. My father offered them the car that Camelia, my mother’s younger sister, had left behind when she moved to Dubai a couple of years earlier. All of its windows were in place.

Rita’s family traveled abroad to escape the ongoing hostilities and never came back. I was heartbroken by her departure. Having her nearby had been both fun and comforting. It made living through the war a bit more bearable. While my siblings, or my parents, didn’t seem to mind life in Beirut at the time, I hated living in a war, and in the years that followed, I sank into a semi-depression. I desperately wanted to leave. We finally did in year eleven of the fifteen-year Civil War. I was sixteen.

These events and those of the day the bomb hit the ground floor are among the moments I most vividly remember. We were lucky that day in the shelter. Many others were not. Hundreds died. But even the less tragic moments of war are insidious and corrosive.

The long-lasting psychological effects on civilians who live through war have not been studied thoroughly or systematically. The research that has been done isn’t all that surprising. A review paper conducted in 2005, a year that marked the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and of the start of the war in Lebanon, noted: “Among the consequences of war, the impact on the mental health of the civilian population is one of the most significant. Studies of the general population show a definite increase in the incidence and prevalence of mental disorders.” The paper concluded that women and children are the most affected.

Other studies have shown effects on fertility and trauma-related problems in children.

A World Health Organization report on mental health in post-conflict countries, released in 2004, noted that many people around the world at the time were living through conflict. Since then, several new wars have erupted, including ones in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Ukraine, Gaza, and, more recently, several cities in the Middle East. Scores of civilians have died in these wars. Scores more have suffered or will suffer from prolonged grief, the loss of their homes, the loss of their childhoods, and witnessing staggering brutality.

As long as there have been wars, people have sheltered underground. But it wasn’t until airplanes with bomb-dropping mechanisms were debuted at the turn of the last century that the threat came from the sky. The U.K. built several communal shelters in the 1940s, but during the Blitz in London in World War II, people instinctively rushed to underground structures, most notably the Underground stations, which the British administration wisely outfitted with bunk beds, first aid facilities, and chemical toilets. It even appointed marshals to keep the order. One photo I found shows a couple dancing in the Underground, just like my father and his tall partner did that night in our shelter in Beirut.

While the U.S. had suffered attacks on its territories during that war, it was only in its aftermath, in response to the threat of nuclear war, that it sought to build communal shelters for Americans. In 1961, Congress voted to spend more than $160 million on these structures, which were marked with a clear sign featuring three yellow inverted triangles on a black and yellow background. By the late 1970s, the fallout shelter program was discontinued. The shelters were largely decommissioned and most of the signs denoting their locations were removed, though, recently, I came upon one in Long Island City, NY. It was jarring to encounter it on a quiet, leafy street. I wasn’t sure if it was still operable. I was half-relieved to know that it could be an option should disaster strike and half-horrified by the idea that I and my...

Pregnancy Drinking Games

Rachel Reyes — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0700

Take a casual swig of club soda disguised as vodka soda every time you attend a gathering and are trying to hide that you’re newly pregnant.

Take a tiny, carefully controlled sip of water every time you vomit.

Take another sip of water every time you vomit up the water you just swallowed. Repeat three to seventeen times daily.

Drink a cup of coffee and make an exaggerated “ahh” sound after every sip whenever a nosy coworker says you shouldn’t consume any caffeine during pregnancy.

Every time you have a weird craving, guzzle garlic ranch dressing straight from the bottle.

Every time you crave something specific from childhood, cry because someone had the nerve to discontinue the Walmart brand of neon green ketchup in 2006. Drink your tears.

Every time you crave something that’s definitely not food—such as pool water, couch cushion stuffing, or the smell of Ace Hardware in edible form—begrudgingly drink a Sprite.

Take a loud, obnoxious gulp of your third McDonald’s strawberry milkshake of the day every time someone says she was “lucky” enough to “only crave carrots and radish tops” when she was pregnant.

Tip back a cup of liquid Tylenol every time you get a headache from your aunt telling you not to take acetaminophen, according to something she read on a Facebook page called “Tradvice from RFK Jr. Fans.”

Take a sip of freshly squeezed orange juice every time—never mind, you can’t have that because it’s unpasteurized.

Take a sip of chamomile tea every time… actually, you probably shouldn’t have that either, because some reputable websites say it could be unsafe.

Take a sip of sparkling lemon water—wait, no, definitely do not drink that, according to Reddit user cricketbutts12, because the added fruit flavoring makes the baby grow extra toes. You know that sounds ridiculous, but why take the risk? This is your child. How could you even think about endangering your precious baby just so you can have a stupid La Croix?

Drink pickle juice whenever you feel like it.

Every time you get up at night to pee, take a sip of the ice water on your nightstand while knowing it’s definitely contributing to all the peeing. Repeat five to twenty-seven times nightly.

Drink a glass of beet juice, which is supposedly good for banishing forgetfulness, every time you experience pregnancy brain.

Choke down a bottle of radioactive yellow glucose drink when it’s time to take your gestational diabetes test. Wish it tasted like Ace Hardware instead.

Swallow a mouthful of chocolate milk every time you experience heartburn, that is until you realize that chocolate milk is actually giving you heartburn and can’t believe the utter betrayal. If your partner says, “Did you mean udder betrayal?” kick them out and tell them to buy you some red Gatorade.

Drink a glass of beet juice, which is supposedly good for banishing forgetfulness, every time you experience pregnancy brain.

Each time you feel irrational rage toward your partner, take a sip of red Gatorade—oh, that’s right, you CAN’T, because they bought YELLOW and said it would taste the SAME.

Take a minuscule sip of vanilla protein shake for breakfast when that’s all your stomach can hold in the late third trimester.

Crack open a new bottle of Coke every time the one you were just drinking fell on the ground, and you can’t bend over anymore to reach it.

Choke on the sip of apple juice you were just swallowing when your water breaks unexpectedly.

Once labor is underway, toast your partner with wine glasses full of grape juice, slip into your brand-new custom-embroidered silk delivery gown, and settle in for a How I Met Your Mother marathon together as you eagerly yet calmly anticipate your child’s arrival to the world—haha, just kidding. Instead, shovel ice chips into your cheeks like a chipmunk every time a contraction punches you in the coccyx.

Every time someone tells you to push, fully disassociate from your body and, in an alternate reality, lie under a parasol somewhere in the Caribbean and savor a Sex on the Beach, which is exactly how you got into this pregnancy thing in the first place.

Anytime after giving birth, take a long, slow sip of the liquor of your choice every time someone asks you when you’re having another baby.

If Every Congressman Facing Credible Rape Allegations Resigned, We’d Have No One Left to Govern the Country

Talia Argondezzi — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 17:15:00 -0700

“Eric Swalwell, a Democratic congressman from the San Francisco Bay Area, said on Monday that he is resigning after allegations he sexually assaulted a former staff member and engaged in misconduct with other women.”
— New York Times

- - -

I’m sure the many people who called for Eric Swalwell’s expulsion from the House of Representatives had the best intentions. Let’s forbid suspected rapists from running our government, these wide-eyed idealists probably thought. But now that he’s resigned, we need to face the dire consequences: if we kick one suspected rapist out of Congress, we’ll then have to kick out all the suspected rapists.

It’s naïve to imagine the government can continue to function without the tireless dedication of our best and brightest rapists.

First of all, purging lawmakers who have been credibly accused of sexual assault contradicts the will of the people. These congressmen worked hard to get to the top of a competitive field of notably rape-y politicians. Voters have made their voices heard by choosing the very rapiest. Should we punish these talented assaulters for their success?

And to those who would argue that voters didn’t know the men were suspected rapists when they voted for them, I can only say: Are you serious?

The American voter isn’t stupid. They know what they’re getting into when they cast a vote for a man.

Sure, these congressmen’s campaigns could have been stronger if they had openly admitted to their histories of sexual assault, or claimed only certain attractive women are worthy of assault, or blamed victims for being raped. If they work on perfecting their messaging, someday maybe they will be elected president. But for now, because they made the mistake of partially concealing their sleaze, they have to settle for congressman. It makes no sense for a lawmaker to resign when he’s only delivering exactly what the citizens have shown they want.

In other words, we, the American people, were asking for it.

Now, the anti-rape idealists have gotten what they wanted, but they haven’t thought through what will happen next. If we investigate the allegations against Swalwell, we’ll have to investigate all the sexual misconduct accusations against every congressman. And then what? If every one of them facing credible accusations resigns or is expelled, who will run the country? With Republican representative Tony Gonzales’s resignation over sexual misconduct allegations, we’re already sliding down a slippery slope. If we follow these resignations to their logical conclusion, we’ll be left, effectively, without a Congress at all.

Those who don’t want sexual predators as lawmakers probably imagine someone else could run for Congress. But the United States has spent centuries developing a leadership pipeline that favors maximal male sliminess. If any man without a strong inclination toward sexual misconduct exists, surely he is unqualified to lead. Even if he started today, he’d hardly have enough time to accumulate the number of dick pics needed to alienate his entire female staff in time for election day.

Of course, we must take it as a given that very few women can become legislators. It’s simply too time-consuming and demanding a job for anyone who’s had to spend most of her career fending off the sexual advances of her congressman boss.

I Finally Got a Walking Pad to Store Under the Bed and Never Use

Alexis Pooley — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 09:46:00 -0700

After weeks of debating, I finally got a walking pad that I can slide right under my bed and never step foot on. It’s so sleek and light, you can store it anywhere and forget you ever bought it. I make health a priority by spending money on things that I’ll use a few times, then put down in the basement for the ghosts.

The great thing about this walking pad is that it doesn’t have a safety handrail, so if I ever got it out, I could risk my life while sending emails at my desk. Some reviews say the belt gets squeaky over time, but since I’m not going to turn mine on, it should be fine. I would give it a great review if I remembered I owned it.

I bought a weighted vest to use with the walking pad, which is now hanging over a kitchen chair until I move apartments. I went with the eight-pound vest to start and will work my way up from there if I ever manage to put it on. Weighted vests have become popular because they help with bone density if you can suspend them from your skeleton and walk around, which I cannot. They’re also great for increased strength and endurance, and that sounds like an awesome experience for someone else.

I had to get new running shoes because proper foot support is important when you’re walking a lot, which doesn’t directly apply to me. They were pretty expensive, but they look cool sitting on the floor under my coats. I should wear them when I’m getting my steps in while buying cheese at Costco, but what can I say, I love slopping around in my dusty old flip-flops with my crocodile toes out.

This new sports bra is very tight. It feels like a medical device that will need to be removed with scissors. When I sweat, getting it off over my head is like wrestling a piece of pizza out of my dog’s mouth. Luckily, I’m not doing anything to make myself sweat. I drink electrolytes to replace anything I’ve lost, which is nothing. I drink three liters of water a day to test my pelvic floor, and let’s just say I don’t always pass.

It’s great that my watch tells me when to stand. When I hit dismiss and continue sitting, I think, What a useful feature for other people. It does a good job of raising awareness of how much I like sitting and lying down and not getting up. I bet if I could take my walking pad out from under the bed, I’d enjoy recording workouts on my watch, but the walking pad remains under there, and I am over here, and those are the hard facts.

One day soon, I will put on my running shoes and sports bra, take a walk outside, where I can hear the birds and feel the sun, and spend not one living moment upon my walking pad.

McSweeney’s

Our Military Is SICK AF, Bro

Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of Trump’s Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes: March 2026: Atrocities 805-866

ATROCITY KEY

February 2026

Main Index

Trump’s first term

March 2026

You Don’t Really Think Every Member of Trump’s Cabinet Gets Off on Being Unaccountable, Do You?

How to Baby-Proof Your Home

Frequently Asked Questions About Our Innovative New EdTech Collaboration

New and Exciting Anxieties Gifted to Me by My Three-Year-Old

In Our Glorious AI Future, There Will Be No Such Thing as Money (For You)

A Death Doula’s Out-of-Office Auto-Reply Email

I’d Love to Pass Through the Strait of Hormuz, but No Worries If Not

Fisher-Price Is Pivoting to AI-Powered Autonomous Weapons Manufacturing

As Much as I Appreciate the Trenchant Commentary on the American Healthcare System, I’m Here at The Pitt Because My Appendix Burst

Hairballing

Henry VIII’s Dating App Profiles

Harry, 18

Henry, 34

H.R., 45

Hal, 48

Hank, 49

Henry, 52

Transcript from the Meeting Where They Invented the Mammogram Machine

April 1965 Meeting to Discuss Boob Cancer Problem

The Five Stages of Millennial Wedding Planning

Denial

Anger

Bargaining

Depression (Financial)

Acceptance

Vatican City is Overrun with Crime Thanks to Its Woke Pope

A Childhood in Lebanon, in Spite of War

Pregnancy Drinking Games

If Every Congressman Facing Credible Rape Allegations Resigned, We’d Have No One Left to Govern the Country

I Finally Got a Walking Pad to Store Under the Bed and Never Use

April 1965
Meeting to Discuss
Boob Cancer Problem