McSweeney’s

Canada Sends Polite Regards to the United States on Its Semi-Quasi-Bisequi-Whateverennial

Ashley K. Frantik — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:00:00 -0400

Dear United States,

Please accept these civil and cautiously optimistic congratulations on achieving a quarter millennium as a nation. We hope this reaches you in time for the celebrations. We didn’t realize that a “semiquincentennial” was an actual thing. Sorry. It’s become really hard to tell when you’re trolling and when you’re being sincere with an alarming amount of confidence.

Our invitation was addressed to the “51st state,” so we assumed it was some kind of Trojan-horse-style scheme and threw it away without opening it. We were sure it was just another excuse for your president to put his image on something. It’s only now that we’re discovering there are too many multisyllabic synonyms for this unpronounceable milestone to be completely fictitious. Our bad. As usual, you are older, wiser, and not just inventing reasons to print a novelty 250-dollar bill.

Since we’re not sure what’s going on with international flights at your airports right now, and your customs enforcement has been making us a little jumpy these days, please accept these digital well wishes on your bisesquicentennial. We were going to send you something, but we couldn’t remember if the traditional gift for 250 is aluminum or softwood lumber. Or is it just straight tariffs for a sestercentennial? We always get that one mixed up with quasquicentennial, and since exports are a touchy subject, we didn’t want to ask. Besides, we weren’t sure whether any gift we sent would be classified as a foreign import, a domestic transfer, or the opening move in a constitutional negotiation. Money is tight right now anyway. We’re sure you understand.

Forgive us; we waited too long to get you something, and now we’re scrambling. Frankly, we weren’t even sure you were going to make it this far, so we were kinda putting it off. We threw this letter together as it’s become increasingly obvious that you are indeed celebrating, however unlikely, your continued existence as a unified country and not using a White House UFC match as a cover for some kind of annexation scheme. (Although Alberta remains hopeful. They also have some questions about your “Freedom Trucks.”)

We would visit, but we know you’re busy redoing your pool, building a ballroom, trying to stay awake while holding together a complex and robust federation. You probably don’t have time to meet with a modest, independent constitutional monarchy like us. We missed you at our sesquicentennial back in 2017, by the way. In fairness, we understand that at the time you regarded us as a neighbouring country rather than a long-term acquisition target. It’s fine. We figured you had a lot on your plate, and that’s why you forgot to RSVP. It’s hard to keep track of these national celebrations that play linguistic god with Latin prefixes when you’ve got a constitution to uphold, amirite? You were preoccupied with… whatever was going on at the time. We’re sure you got it all worked out by now.

Maybe we can catch up at our septaquintaquinquecentennial. You’ve probably already got it marked on your calendar since it is also a very real word for a very real number of years that a sovereign state may choose to celebrate in a grandiose manner. If not, we’ll catch up at your bicenterquasquigenary. We wouldn’t miss it, and we’re sure you won’t either.

Until then, take care, eh?

— Canada

Good Luck Proving We’re Competent Enough to Knowingly Commit War Crimes

Talia Argondezzi — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

“It is unclear if the U.S. intentionally struck [Iran’s] water facilities, or knew what was in the buildings. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime under international law.” – The New York Times

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A few crybabies are claiming the United States’ recent bombing of Iran’s water storage and distribution facilities constitutes a war crime. But listen to the criteria for proving it was a war crime: we need to have known which buildings our missiles were going to strike and what was in those buildings.

How can anyone expect our military leaders to know what’s inside the buildings we’re bombing? Do you have any idea how similar weapons storage warehouses look to water treatment facilities and girls’ volleyball games?

What about the words “indiscriminate bombings” don’t you people understand? (For us, it’s the word “indiscriminate”—that’s a big word! We’re not nerds.)

As for the other war crimes criterion, of course we had no idea where our missiles would land. Yes, we call these “targeted strikes” with “precision munitions,” but “target” and “precision” are relative concepts. The missiles struck precisely within the target of Iran (not counting the ones that killed those Indian sailors in the Strait of Hormuz).

Have these war crime hawks considered that the so-called “victims” of our so-called “war crimes” are, themselves, war criminals? (The Iranian leadership, not the Iranian villagers whose water supply has been cut off—although nothing inspires war criminality like extreme thirst caused by foreign military action, so it’s only a matter of time.) We haven’t read the international rules of engagement because that’s also geek stuff, but we assume that if your enemy commits war crimes, you’re allowed to commit war crimes. That’s just how the law works.

Oh, sorry, smartypants, that’s not how the law works? Even more evidence that we’re not competent enough to stand trial for war crimes.

It’s unreasonable to expect the people commanding the world’s most powerful military to know the ins and outs of international law governing military action. We’re too busy choosing lapel pins that give “sexy sailor but in a very hetero way” and delivering speeches calling our generals fat.

No judge or jury could look at the last year and a half of this administration and imagine it knows anything at all, let alone something important like what international laws are, where missiles will fall, and what’s in the locations the missiles hit.

And no, the President posting “We’re going to bomb Iran’s civilian infrastructure” and then bombing Iran’s civilian infrastructure is not strong evidence of deliberate intent. Why would someone planning to break the law publicly announce that they were going to break the law?

In fact, it’s the President’s ninja-level incompetence that makes the best case against war crime accusations. To find out what’s inside targets and then intentionally strike them, we’d need intelligence: the number one thing we’ve spent this administration proving, beyond the shadow of a doubt, we have none of.

AI Economics for Dummies

Andrew Singleton — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:01:00 -0400

As AI companies get ready to go public and we get a deeper look at their inner workings, it’s only natural to have questions about their finances, like “Do they make money?” and “How?” Here are a few examples to help the average layperson understand the business side of AI.

1. Acquiring one grape costs Alex $2 billion. Alex offers to sell Mike one grape a month for the next 12 months for $1 billion per grape. Alex asks for the full $12 billion up front and provides Mike with one grape for the first month. Alex makes a $10 billion profit this month; his ARR is $120 billion, and his profits are trending up at an infinite rate. The Wall Street Journal’s business editor moves into Alex’s house, having accepted a part-time position as Alex’s human footstool. He never asks to see the books.

2. Laura drives a taxi. Instead of charging her customers a fee for every ride, she charges them a $20/month subscription. Laura has 40 million paying customers, totaling roughly $13 billion in annual revenue. Laura spends $25 billion/year on gas. In a fit of late-capitalist bloodlust, hordes of tech and finance bros riot in the streets, firebombing every rideshare, bus, and pedicab they can find, declaring the transportation business officially “over.” Also, Laura’s taxi cost her $1 trillion to attain, and she’ll have to replace it in four to eight years.

3. Jenny owns a crematorium. John’s propane company gives her a $20 billion investment in return for 5 percent of her operation. Jenny throws $10 billion into the incinerator, then pays John $10 billion to buy propane to burn that money to ashes. John reports that his AI investments have generated $10 billion in revenue this quarter and that he owns 5 percent of a $100 billion business. A reporter from Forbes is assigned to profile John and Jenny, and over the course of his research, he becomes embroiled in a passionate but confusing three-way love affair with them, which eventually turns into a polyamorous common-law marriage. His profile is glowing, but light on financial details.

4. Benjamin owns a farm. He employs 100 workers plowing his fields. His total payroll is $10 million/year. One day, he buys a mule, which provides the worker who uses it with a modest 10 percent productivity gain. Benjamin fires 99 of his workers and purchases 99 mules, expecting a 1,000 percent productivity gain. The driverless mules cause plow damage to his property in excess of $50 million. Benjamin loses another $5 million due to the loss of productivity from his one remaining employee, who no longer guides a plow but instead spends 100 percent of his time shoveling mule shit. Goldman Sachs builds an altar to Benjamin in their lobby and cuts out the heart of a junior analyst on it every Friday. They call it “Blood Sacrifice Friday.” The name isn’t catchy, but the event becomes a management favorite nonetheless.

5. Xavier owns an apartment that he rents out at a loss of $1 billion/month. Seeing this success, he decides to make financial commitments to construct $850 billion in new apartments in places nobody wants them. He convinces Ted to leverage everything he owns to help him build the apartments, telling him that once they are built, every human being on Earth will live in them. Ted contributes $100 billion, part of which immediately goes toward paying off Xavier’s $1 billion/month loss. Forbes gives Xavier and Ted a cover feature, likening their building project to God creating the Heavens and the Earth. Many Fortune 500 CEOs take this comparison literally and establish a new religion around Ted and Xavier, with themselves as high priests. Soon, they start a Holy War with the pope, declaring “Ted and Xavier the One True Gods on Earth” and promising to “purge the nonbelievers” in an official press release. They annex, then subsequently demolish, Vatican City, committing another $900 billion dollars to build new apartments in its place. Forbes hails this as “disruptive,” though it’s not clear how Ted and Xavier plan to finance the project.

We hope these examples help clarify the inner workings of AI economics. But if you’re still confused, all you really need to know is that everything is totally working and everyone is making a lot of money, and you should just stop asking questions, luddite.

Walking Trauma

Ali Fitzgerald — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:01:00 -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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Notes from a Tired Egyptian Guy Whose Job Is Explaining That Humans Built the Pyramids

Aman Alam — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Day 4,382 of people asking whether “normal workers” could really move large stones without assistance from mystical sky beings.

Yes. That is generally how construction functions.

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A man approached me near the Nile today and whispered, “But have you considered… visitors from the stars?”

Brother. We do not even have reliable sandals yet. Why would intergalactic civilizations travel unimaginable distances only to help stack triangles?

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People dramatically underestimate what thousands of organized humans can accomplish when they are adequately fed, aggressively supervised, and denied alternative career paths.

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Another traveler asked: “How could ancient people possibly understand mathematics?”

Excellent question. We accidentally invented geometry while trying to avoid carrying rocks incorrectly.

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There is a strange tendency among future civilizations to imagine ancient Egyptians spent all day worshipping cats, speaking in riddles, and waiting for aliens to explain basic engineering.

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I showed one visitor the ramps.

The pulleys.
The labor records.
The architectural planning.

He nodded thoughtfully and replied, “Interesting. But what if extraterrestrials?”

At this point, I believe some people simply find aliens emotionally comforting.

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Do you know what sounds more believable than “A sophisticated civilization developed impressive construction techniques over centuries”?

Apparently: “Space people.”

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Yesterday, someone pointed at the pyramids and said, “There’s no way humans did this.”

This feels deeply insulting considering humans also created taxation, organized warfare, and raisins.

Clearly, we are capable of terrible perseverance.

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The workers themselves would be furious hearing these theories. Imagine dedicating twenty years to hauling limestone under desert heat only for somebody in the future to conclude, “Honestly, this feels Martian.”

Also, if aliens truly possessed advanced cosmic technology, why would they choose pyramids? Why not invent indoor cooling? Or chairs that support the lower back?

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Tomorrow, I must return to supervising entirely human workers using entirely human tools to build another entirely human monument that future people will somehow attribute to lizards from space.

Welcome, Soccer Fans. We’re Monetizing the Oxygen

Nathan Cowley — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:44:00 -0400

Welcome, soccer fans from around the globe, to the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. We hope you have a pleasant stay with us and enjoy all the exciting experiences North America has to offer.

Oh, and by the way, we’re monetizing the oxygen.

Yes, we know it’s a bummer. However, due to low ticket sales, low hotel bookings, and generally low enthusiasm, oxygen is the only necessity left for us to exploit. Thanks to European disdain for endless commercial breaks and the universal objection to using the center circle to advertise Bud Light, oxygen is now our last avenue for profit. We hope you can understand.

FAQ

How do we access the oxygen?
Thousands of O-Two anti-suffocation stations will be installed in every host city at the low cost of just $0.20 per minute. From Boston to New York, Vancouver to Monterrey, fans will be able to suck down that sweet oxygen to their heart’s content.

Will North Americans have to pay for oxygen?
In short, no. For the past two years, we have been slowly adding trace amounts of ammonia into North America until our air finally became unbreathable. However, during this period, our bodies have adapted to the additional ammonia, so only tourists are susceptible to our deadly atmosphere.

How long can I survive in the ammonia?
Depending on the person, vital organs will begin shutting down within two to five minutes of arriving in North America. For ease of survival, fans are urged to pre-book their life-saving O-Two before traveling to avoid any disappointment of a slow, painful death.

Travelers are also advised to pack goggles in the unlikely event that the ammonia burns out their retinas.

Does O-Two offer a free trial?
Yes. To receive your five-minute free trial of oxygen, please download our brand new O-Two app, where you’ll be able to track your oxygen levels, chances of survival, and connect with other suffocating soccer fans near you.

Once your free trial ends, you will be asked to subscribe to O-Two Infinity for just $149.99 a month, which includes a free O-Two coffee tumbler while stocks last.

Is there an ad-free version?
The ad-free version of O-Two is offered at a reduced rate of $139.99 per month. Please be advised that oxygen will be turned off during commercial breaks. For users who cannot hold their breath for four and a half minutes, we strongly recommend subscribing to our all-access tier.

What about the players?
Similar to cooling breaks, players will be permitted three-minute oxygen breaks at a reduced rate of $0.15 per minute. To keep things flowing at a fast pace, we’ve limited teams to a maximum of twenty oxygen breaks each half, which works out at a barely noticeable two hours of additional time.

Inspired by concussion substitutions, we’re also introducing brand-new suffocation substitutions, just in case a player doesn’t make it back to the bench in time.

This is messed up, right?
Agree to disagree. Oxygen is a vital component of human survival. It’s really no different from water when you think about it. Yet we spend hundreds of dollars on that every year, don’t we? If anything, we should’ve done this sooner.

If we purchase your oxygen, will you at least stop calling it “soccer”?
We’ll think about it.

To Fold the SuperStroller, You Must First Earn an Engineering Degree

Megan Rogers — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 05:00:00 -0700

At SuperStrollers, we’re here for you, new parents. That’s why we’ve designed the world’s safest stroller with effortless steering and ample storage that’ll take you from the playground to the grocery store with ease. The best part? It’s super easy to fold as long as you have an advanced STEM degree.

To fold the stroller so it fits in your trunk, unbuckle your little one. Then, using the hand that isn’t holding your baby, execute the press and twist. Simply click the button that’s hidden under the seat cover while simultaneously twisting the handlebar that’s an arm’s length away by understanding and relying on angular momentum.

Seriously? How can you not figure this out?

It’s probably because you’re not a good parent. A good mom or dad would intuitively know how to maneuver the two-hand close with one hand and would definitely have an understanding of the big crunch, which is both the physics needed to close the SuperStroller and also the theory that the ultimate fate of the universe is to collapse into a black hole singularity.

You spent hours researching baby strollers, reading safety reports, and scouting sales. Did you consider studying basic quantum physics instead?

All you need to do to fold the SuperStroller is lift the lock, pull the lever, and apply Newton’s second law of motion.

Parents rave about our stroller’s all-wheel suspension and multiple beverage holders. Best of all, you can carry the SuperStroller around once you collapse it, as long as you have superior spatial reasoning and a functional pelvic floor.

Try folding it again. This time, stay calm. Remember, babies mirror our nervous systems, and we’d hate for the little one to get all out of sorts because you cannot figure out how to close our stroller, a task that requires a passing grade from an undergraduate-level physics course and a full night’s sleep.

There you go. Now you’ve got a collapsed stroller that you can tote anywhere. With the stroller over one shoulder, the diaper bag on the other, and a crying baby in between, you’ll be ready for your first post-delivery breakdown at the coffee shop.

And remember, to unfold your stroller, simply scream into the void.

I am Emperor Caligula, and Even I Think the White House UFC Event Is a Bit Much

Patrick Coyne — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 13:00:00 -0400

I am Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus Caligula, successor of Tiberius, Son of the Divine Germanicus, and Supreme Commander and Holder of Tribunician Power, Pontifex Maximus. And I decree, in regard to the upcoming White House UFC event…

It’s a bit much, right? Like even for me. Pretty gauche, no?

Caged brutes pummeling one another bloody on the historic lawn of the Executive Mansion? All to celebrate President Trump’s birthday?

Come on, what are we doing here?

I might have been guilty of some runaway self-indulgence from time to time. I mean, I used to literally drink pearls and once declared war on Neptune.

But is America really going to sully its iconic symbol of democracy with Dana White’s CTE speedrun machine? Why can’t Trump keep his bloodsport / ego strokefest in the coliseum where it belongs? This whole ordeal is really giving mad kings a bad name.

And what’s next? Pete Hegseth’s hardcore backyard wrestling in the rose garden? How about a JD Vance dunk tank on the south lawn? Or Stephen Miller as a carnival geek biting heads off live chickens and guessing immigrants’ weights? I’m just saying, this is beneath the most sacred of America’s institutions.

I know this might seem surprising coming from me. And don’t get me wrong, I’m no stranger to bread and circuses. But considering that the price of bread is currently skyrocketing, Trump spending millions on a red-white-and-blue-drenched octagon is a real slap in the face to John Q. Plebeian.

Besides, there’s an appropriate time and a place for brutality and violence. It’s like I was saying to my trusted advisor/horse the other day: The orgies stay on the orgy ships, and the beheadings and burnings stay in the gladiator arenas, or the prisons, or the slave quarters, or sometimes on the orgy ships. But I don’t spill blood at home. For one, that’s where all my stuff is. And two, I like to keep business and pleasure separate. Mostly…

Of course, maybe I’m expecting too much from the modern world. As you can imagine, things were very different in Ancient Rome during my four-year rule. Allow me to set the scene:

I was a megalomaniac leader completely unmoored from reality. I declared war on the environment. I led many unsuccessful invasions and declared victory anyway. I built monuments to myself and insisted that my minions worship me as their god. I engaged in heinous sex acts and even lusted after my blood relatives. And finally, I routinely humiliated senators and political adversaries with childish nicknames like “Little” Marco Naevius, “Sleepy” Tiberius, and “Crooked” Cassius Chaerea.

Again, everything I’ve just described must be completely foreign to the United States in 2026.

Also, the majority of Roman citizens celebrated my eventual assassination. Not sure if there are any parallels there…

Regardless, the concept of restraint is timeless. While I am obviously 100 percent on board with the ruling class engaging in debauched carnality and unpunished murder (is that still a thing in 2026?), please, let’s try to keep it classy.

This Is All Completely Unprecedented

Ginny Hogan — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 05:00:00 -0700

One thing is for sure: We’ve never seen anything like it. The actions of this president and his administration are completely and utterly unprecedented.

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In an unprecedented move, the president chose to boost the inflation rate. That isn’t typically his job, although, in his defense, the framers of the Constitution were deliberately vague. Many interpret the Eighth Amendment as giving the president power to tank the economy.

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Normally, the president doesn’t try to oust lawmakers from his own party because they disagreed with him one time. Or in John Cornyn’s case, less than one time. But this president has always had a quirky, unprecedented way of keeping the coalition together.

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It’s definitely unusual to see a president pardon himself for crimes he has not yet committed. To be frank, we didn’t realize there were crimes he hadn’t yet committed. In many ways, he’s like a magician pulling infinite bunnies out of a hat, except the bunnies are tax fraud. We can’t think of a precedent in modern history. But is this good or bad? We’ll leave that question to the historians.

Never mind—he just threw all the historians in jail. Unprecedented, truly.

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The president has declared the free press an enemy of the state. But we’re professionals, so we are committed to presenting both sides of the question of whether or not we should exist (we were all philosophy majors anyway).

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So, the president just posted that he’s not going to follow the law anymore. And naturally, our readers want to know if that’s legal. That’s not for us to say—we are not lawyers; we are journalists. What we do know is that it’s unprecedented.

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Yes, the president announced that the next general election would be held whenever he felt the timing was right. Critics have called the move alarming. Supporters have called it decisive. One thing’s for sure: It’s unprecedented. Uncharted, even. Downright atypical, if we’re being completely honest. But we don’t want to condemn the move until we know exactly when this whimsical election will be. What if it’s November 2028, and then he leaves peacefully in January 2029? Then, we would have sounded the alarm for no reason at all, and we’d look like idiots.

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This week, the president dissolved Congress and asked the members to reapply for their jobs.

Actually, this one is a good idea.

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In a highly unprecedented move, the president suspended the Constitution and all future elections. But the good news (for all of us) is that he has enough food in his bunker/ballroom to last until 2037. The White House now contains an unprecedented amount of Smuckers PB and J pockets. Never before seen. Novel. Rare. Unique. Anomalous.

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Well, El Supremo has repealed the second law of thermodynamics. I can’t think of a precedent in modern history. Groundbreaking!

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As of this filing, entropy has since reversed, then resumed, then stopped taking our calls. And the stars have begun to go out. Yes, in a highly unparalleled move, the universe is cooling toward a uniform and final stillness. We don’t want to overstate the situation, since many people prefer cooler weather. What we can say, with confidence, is that this is unprecedented. In our collective eighty years of experience, we’ve truly never seen anything quite like it. We’ve reached out to the sun for comment. It didn’t respond, which was comforting, in a precedented sort of way.

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Obviously, our readers have a lot of questions, but one thing we know with certainty is that there was no precedent for the heat death of the universe.

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In an unprecedented turn of events, Ross Douthat was right: We lived in interesting times.

An Interview with Dave Eggers About His New Novel, Contrapposto

Knopf — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 14:28:00 -0400

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: And she has ambitions for him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Press Has Finally Been Freed from Journalism

Eli Grober — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 12:45:00 -0400

“[Scott] Pelley’s firing came after [Bari] Weiss dismissed several of his colleagues and hired a new 60 Minutes boss, Nick Bilton, whom Pelley then clashed with in a staff meeting. Pelley, along with a number of other 60 Minutes correspondents who were fired, have now accused Weiss of editorial interference and bias, charges that CBS News and Weiss deny.” — New York Times

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When I first started out in the news, there was far too much reporting. Barely anyone was just making stuff up. It was as if nobody even wanted to put their thumb on the scale on behalf of the powerful. As you know, I’ve made it my life’s goal to change that. And now, at long last, the press has been freed from journalism.

I come from an opinion background. That means I have never been shackled by “facts.” The truth is, at best, inconvenient and, at worst, a threat to my bottom line. I have always believed it is the job of the news to write a rough draft of history—and then redline that draft until it fits my personal worldview.

I first left legacy media when a new, disturbing consensus emerged in the press: that I was bad at my job. So I did what any rational journalism-averse person would do. I blamed everything on woke. On cancel. On not listening enough to diverse voices, like fascists. I forged ahead to build a new media empire, one built on complete editorial independence and also millions of dollars from venture capitalists. My goal was to unmuzzle those who have been silenced, like billionaire children’s book authors, billionaire music producers, and billionaire tech executives.

But it never felt like enough. The news was still out there. Journalists were still reporting. Stories were still being vetted, researched, and—gasp—told. It all haunted me, like an unsolved case. My white whale: the integrity of the fourth estate.

Then, a miracle occurred. Venture capitalists came for legacy media. Finally, people who truly respected free speech bought free speech. And they bought me too. Not to lead in print but in televised news. I spent my entire career not preparing for this moment. It was time to root out the infection of journalism that had spread to every corner of the press.

I needed to be careful not to give up the game too early. Journalism still had its allies in the news. There were plenty of people on the inside who wanted to keep journalism alive. I needed to move slowly. So I barely did anything at first. I simply delayed and altered massive investigative segments, interfered with reporting, injected falsehoods to favor the White House’s views, and fired as many prominent producers and talent as I could. Nobody even knew I was there.

How does the news go morally bankrupt? Gradually, then suddenly. Bit by bit, I chipped away. In the end, I didn’t even have to physically hunt down the rest of the journalists on staff as I’d planned. They decided to leave on their own, according to the statement I just made up. And here we are today, another trusted institution crumbling into a beautiful pile of bootlicking cronyism. The press is finally free from journalism.

A Few Explanations Before I Give You Grays Sports Almanac

Pat Cassels — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 05:00:00 -0700

Today’s your lucky day, kid. I’m you from the future. I traveled back to 1955 to give you this sports almanac. It lists all the biggest sports events from now to the end of the century. All you have to do is bet on the winner, and you’ll never lose.

You’re the fifth “me” I’ve visited. I guess sports have changed between 1955 and the twenty-first century, because after the others read a few pages of the almanac, they threw it in my face and called me a “psycho.” One of them called the cops. Another got our dad, who pulled out his shotgun and called me a “dirty red.” So this time, I’m explaining a few things so you don’t freak out.

For starters, horse racing is no longer the biggest thing in America. Yes, “seriously.” I know right now it’s as big as baseball, but in the future most Americans just care about the Kentucky Derby, and only because it involves day drinking. The few people who regularly watch horse races anymore are white folks looking for an excuse to cosplay the Jim Crow–era South, millionaires who broker in horse semen, and degenerate gamblers.

Boxing’s also fallen out of the top five. It peaks in 1971 with a fight at the Garden watched by three hundred million people who pretended it was about the Vietnam War, which is a thing you should forget I mentioned. Don’t worry about it.

After that, boxing spends the next fifty years in a slow free fall until the only regular spectators left are subscribers to Cigar Aficionado, men who wear tuxedos to sports events, and degenerate gamblers.

The number one sport in the country is football—by a lot. I know, it’s barely on TV right now, but in my time, it’s pretty much the only television people still watch. It takes off when the NFL begins airing games on Sundays, only slowing down briefly after the Blues Brothers performed during halftime at the Super Bowl.

Take a breath for this next part: The most popular football team is no longer the Cleveland Browns. No, I haven’t smoked a “jazz cigarette.” On the other hand, the league’s biggest stars are still the quarterbacks. Yes, the players who don’t have to run, tackle, be tackled, or even pass all the time. It’s true. Well, technically, the most famous player was a running back, but he was better known for a double homicide. Don’t worry about it.

The game itself is basically the same. Sure, the goalposts have moved, there’s more passing, and science has shown that the sport causes brain damage, but at least there are still cheerleaders!

After football, the second biggest sport is basketball, which you probably don’t know much about since the NBA is only about six years old. I know you think basketball is boring in 1955. Trust me, it gets a lot more exciting after they add innovations like the shot clock and players other than white men from Amish Country.

Then basketball blows up in the ’80s, and in the ’90s an NBA player becomes so famous he acts in a movie with Bugs Bunny. Yes, literally.

No, cartoon characters don’t come to life in the future. The point is, basketball is now a cultural phenomenon. And not just the NBA. Women’s basketball gets really big. This is the point where our 1955 dad called me a “dirty red.”

You’ll be happy to learn that baseball is still popular, especially when everyone starts hitting more home runs after injecting a variety of super-drugs into their asses. Yes, that sounds weird and gross, but it was just the baseball players. And the professional wrestlers. And the entire Tour de France. And… um… Russia.

I don’t like how this next part keeps freaking younger me out, but in the future, Jews are allowed to play golf.

That about covers it. I don’t have time to get into the two-point conversion, Tonya Harding, the Munich Olympics, or the “Super Bowl Shuffle.” But you can’t bet on stuff like that anyway. At least not until the prediction markets that ultimately destroy the global economy. Don’t worry about it.

Good luck, kid. Not that you’ll need it. And if all these crazy changes are too much to keep track of, just remember one thing: When in doubt, always bet against the Mets.

The New Odyssey Movie Is Historically Inaccurate; Matt Damon Isn’t the Least Bit Greek

Carlos Greaves — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 13:00:00 -0400

“Elon Musk has again weighed in on Christopher Nolan’s upcoming big-budget adaptation of The Odyssey, this time agreeing with a racist comment made by a far-right journalist who criticized the casting of Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy.” — The Hollywood Reporter

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Hollywood is once again deliberately undermining Western civilization, this time by desecrating one of the foundational texts of our proud literary canon. Christopher Nolan’s pitiful adaptation of theOdyssey is just the latest in a litany of re-imaginings of beloved works by Tinseltown screenwriters and film directors. The movie is rife with historical inaccuracies, and there’s no greater proof than Matt Damon playing Odysseus. Damon was born and raised outside Boston and isn’t the least bit Greek.

Christopher Nolan had a simple job—faithfully adapt Homer’s epic poem from the written dactylic hexameter into the visual medium of film. That should have started with geographically accurate casting—Greek actors playing Achaeans, Turkish actors playing Trojans, and Cyclops actors from remote Mediterranean islands playing Cyclopes.

Instead, for the leading role of his Greek epic, Nolan chose a man born four thousand miles away in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A man who is best known for lines like “I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this” and “How do you like them apples?” It is disappointing that Nolan cast a townie from an ocean away when he could have easily cast a Greek household name like Yorgos Karamihos. Or, at the very least, Zach Galifianakis.

Furthermore, it is appalling that the actors could not be bothered to recite the story in the original ancient Greek and are instead conversing throughout the entire film in what appears to be modern English. What is so difficult about saying “ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ” as Homer would’ve intended?

It is clear that Hollywood has no interest in historical representation and is instead focused on pushing a single agenda—putting as many white people from the Greater Boston area in television shows and movies as humanly possible.

Think about how many well-known white guys from the Boston area there are in Hollywood: Matt Damon, the Afflecks, the Wahlbergs, John Krasinski, Chris Evans, B. J. Novak, Conan O’Brien, Bill Burr, Louis C. K., and Adam Sandler (southern New Hampshire is basically Massachusetts).

Consider, too, how many movies are set in Boston: Good Will Hunting, The Departed, The Town, Mystic River, Spotlight, Boondock Saints, Fever Pitch, The Social Network, Manchester by the Sea, Hocus Pocus, and Ted. There is no way the twenty-fifth-largest city in America would have that many movies set in it unless Hollywood was up to something.

Clearly, this is a sinister attempt at revisionist history. Clearly, the entire entertainment industry wants us to believe that our greatest heroes, whether it’s Odysseus or Captain America, are Bay Staters who don’t pronounce the letter “r.”

There is only one logical explanation for why Hollywood would go to such lengths to over-represent these Massholes:

It’s rhotic-replacement.

The powers that be (the Illuminati, the Boston Brahmin, whatever you want to call them) are trying to dilute America’s proud “hard r” culture until rhotacism is a thing of the past. If they have their way, we will all be “pahking the cah at Mahket Basket to buy lobstah.” It’s no coincidence that half of Hollywood’s writers went to “Hahvahd.”

We must protect our culture from these “r-less” New Englanders and their quest for rhotic supremacy. The next time Hollywood adapts a classic Greek text, we must demand they do it the right way. There’s nothing historically accurate about, say, Amy Poehler playing Calypso, or Sarah Silverman playing Circe. Those roles should go to an actual sea nymph and an actual witch-goddess, respectively. Anything short of that is a slap in the face to the entire Western world.

I am pleased, however, that Nolan cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy. We all know the ancient Greeks would never have launched a thousand ships for some blonde chick who wouldn’t last a week in the punishing Grecian sun.

McSweeney’s Books: An Excerpt from Our New Book, Documentary Now!

Burt Lancaster — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 08:01:00 -0400

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McSweeney’s and Broadway Video present the official over-six-hundred-page comprehensive companion book to IFC’s Documentary Now!, made with the assistance of series directors Rhys Thomas and Alex Buono and including new writing by Seth Meyers, a foreword by Pulitzer Prize–finalist Matt Zoller Seitz, the complete sheet music for John Mulaney and Eli Bolin’s Co-op: The Musical, and much more.

The book is out now, and to celebrate, we’re sharing an excerpt featuring the show’s very first host, the legendary Burt Lancaster.

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A fierce advocate for independent cinema and documentary, Burt Lancaster was the original host of Documentary Now!¹, serving in this capacity for over a decade. He began his career as an acrobat, and after serving in WWII, ascended to the heights of Hollywood stardom, appearing in such classics as From Here to Eternity, The Leopard, The Swimmer, and many more. This introduction has been included in all editions of this book.

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The original 1975 introduction by
Documentary Now!’s first host,
Burt Lancaster

The first time I saw a film camera, it was in the hands of an amateur documentarian. He was a small man with piercing blue eyes who had come to record the circus where I was performing as part of the acrobatic team, Lang and Cravat. He owned a chain of picture houses outside Miami, and he wanted a one-reeler he could show before the main attractions. I can still recall the butterflies fluttering in my stomach that afternoon. Suddenly, the bars seemed slipperier. The crowd seemed louder. Performing our trapeze routine on film added a layer of permanence to the whole affair.

I share all this to give you a sense of how momentous it is to have one’s life recorded. Documentary as a medium is one of our most powerful precisely because it can reach out into the real world and extract beauty and complexity from one’s actual life.

A still from Kunuk Uncovered.

It’s always a lovely compliment when an actor’s performance is praised as honest, or when a Hollywood film is lauded by the press as “real.” But in the documentary, there’s no need for such puffery. This business of costumes, and casting, and producers calling with notes about the script, well, the documentary doesn’t have to contend with all that. The stories you see are the truth. The people you meet aren’t pretending. If film is the most democratic of modern forms, then documentary is its pinnacle.

A still from Globesman.

In that regard, hosting Documentary Now! has been one of the great honors of my career. This fine program consistently showcases bold, thoughtful, and revolutionary work. The films they’ve broadcast since their inception are unlike anything else in the entertainment landscape. And now, as we set down words and cement celluloid dreams onto the printed page, our humble aspiration is that we might capture a fraction of this essence.

Classic posters from two classic documentaries.

As for that first documentary, the one-reeler of my trapeze performance. Well, I never saw the final result. But I can still recall the incredible feeling of being filmed. It was the feeling that perhaps my story was worthy of telling. It was the feeling that, perhaps, they all are.

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¹ After his retirement, Lancaster was replaced by a rotating cast of hosts, including Gregory Peck, John Pierson, Mel Gibson, James Naughton, Richard Roeper, and Billy Bob Thornton, before Helen Mirren took on the mantle permanently in 2008.

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You can buy Documentary Now! in our store.

I Wished on a Monkey’s Paw for Susan Collins to Lose Her Senate Seat, and Now We’re Stuck with Graham Platner

Justin P. Drew — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

“Several women who dated Graham Platner recall ‘unsettling’ behavior. The Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine could be charming, women said in interviews, but some found his actions intimidating and disturbing.”
— The New York Times

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I must apologize.

You see, right now Graham Platner is the presumptive Democratic nominee for the Maine Senate seat. If he wins, he will go head-to-head with Susan Collins this fall to try to take her seat. And if early polling is any indication, he has a decent chance of winning.

He’s also one of the most scandal-plagued candidates in Senate history.

So, yeah, my bad.

Much like the main character in this year’s word-of-mouth horror hit Obsession, I view myself as an ally. When I watched Susan Collins cast the deciding vote to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, I had some concerns, as she always does.

And then, despite her telling us all that he never would, on June 24, 2022, Brett voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

When I got that Apple News alert, I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit still and do nothing. What am I, a member of Congress? I had to act.

So I dug out my monkey’s paw from the chest in my attic.

I acquired it at a mysterious shop I happened to walk into one evening about ten years ago, while trying to escape a sudden rainstorm. A charismatic shopkeeper with seemingly ulterior motives talked me into taking it, saying it would make my wildest dreams come true. The shop disappeared the moment I walked out of the building and turned around, which was annoying because I do like to keep the option open for returns with purchases like this.

There were three uncurled fingers on it, but I’ve only used the paw once before, back in January 2020, when I asked for a reason to spend more time at home. (I had been traveling nonstop for work in the months leading up to that, so allow me to give a big oopsies on that as well while we’re here.)

Anyway, I made the wish to unseat Collins and waited. And waited. Honestly, with it being nearly four years, I almost forgot I’d made the wish, but all of a sudden, Graham started surging in the polls. He was a well-spoken, salt-of-the-earth type of guy, and Bernie endorsed him, so I was like, “Cool. Maybe it’ll be chill.”

And then the tattoo story broke.

At first I was appalled, and then I sat and thought to myself, Well, it’s possible he really didn’t know what the tattoo meant. Admittedly, I didn’t either until the story went viral and I looked into it. It was then that I realized that if Graham really was a nazi, there’s an entire political party that’s currently in power where he could go and be welcomed with open arms. And what’s the worst that could happen there? He wins and becomes a senator and just votes alongside the fascist party already in power, enabling their every evil whim? Very low risk there.

So, I decided to let it slide. He was still saying all the right stuff, he was making videos on what to do if ICE approaches you and keeping his messaging hyper-focused on the needs of the people and shit.

Then the Reddit story broke, and I could not judge him, for I was once a white dude in his twenties in the year 2013.

But last week, we all found out that Graham was sexting women behind his wife’s back in the early days of their marriage. (And in the coming days, the news around him might get even worse!)

Through it all, the people who support him have just gotten louder and more resolute. They think the Deep State is targeting him, that his platform, which focuses on the needs of the many and the fact that he openly seeks to impeach multiple Supreme Court justices, has sealed his fate as the number one threat in the minds of establishment Democrats and Republicans alike. His fans look at him as a martyr for the greater cause.

That’s when I was like, “Oh fuck, I have created a progressive version of Donald Trump.”

My bad, seriously, guys.

Trump running for president three times and winning twice just proves my theory that if you’re gonna have one political scandal, you might as well have a million. At a certain point, all the noise starts to condense and form a shield around you, and Graham is in the process of building his callus right now.

Sure, there’s a chunk of the Democratic base that won’t fuck with him going forward. Still, anyone who is serious about defeating fascism knows that he’s now basically our only hope to remove Susan Collins from power. Which is crucial.

Yes, there are other candidates on the Democratic ballot (including Janet Mills, whose wildly unpopular campaign against him sputtered to a halt earlier this year), but none of them have the name recognition or, frankly, the motion needed to go head-to-head with Susan. Swap in any other available matchup, and she clears them easily.

Graham Platner was on the cover of Time magazine. That’s as much motion as a rookie Senate candidate could ever hope for. He might be a lightning rod for controversy, but clearly there is something there that makes this man so popular.

Is it the deep, commanding voice? Or the no-nonsense way in which he communicates? Those burly hands?

Is it the fact that his entire vibe harkens back to a long-dormant version of masculinity? Like someone’s wet dream about Ron Swanson made flesh?

Who knows. All I know is that it was no surprise to learn that this guy fucks.

And honestly? I’m still ridin’ with Biden here. If this dude manages to get into power and even makes a lick of progress towards impeaching Clarence Thomas, fuck it: I’ll provide an alibi for him myself. I’ll tell his wife we were out fishing all weekend—I don’t care.

Wait… shit… is that the actual curse here?

That I… understand MAGA now?

That I myself have been reduced to vociferously supporting a bad man because I see him as the only path forward to helping undo a greater evil? Did M. Night Shyamalan write my life?

It doesn’t matter either way, I suppose. The wish has been wished. There’s no unringing this gravelly voiced bell.

I have one uncurled finger left on the paw. I’ve decided I’m gonna cut to the chase and ask for Trump not to be president anymore.

Wish us all luck!

I Can’t Fix Your Life; I’m Just a Bodega Cat Stretching

Louie Aronowitz — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 13:08:00 -0400

Hey, thanks for reaching out. I get that you are having an existential crisis of self, facing the realities of aging, and accepting your social and economic circumstances, but listen, there is nothing I can do; I’m just a cat stretching in a bodega.

And no, it doesn’t matter that it’s a BIG stretch either.

I can’t do anything about your unaffordable rent or exorbitant student loans; I have no expenses in my life. I live in a potato chip display and sleep twenty-three hours a day. I can’t fix your general lack of purpose. The most I can offer is startling you as you reach for a bag of Sun Chips, but that’ll only make you feel alive for a split second. Then it’s back to pondering the pointlessness of everything.

That tuxedo cat, spending her days crawling into the fresh vegetable display? She can’t help either. She spends most of her time licking the broccoli florets, so she can’t explain how your deductible works. When the insurance company tells you to call the doctor, who then tells you to call the insurance company in an endless cycle where all parties involved are just waiting for you to die so they don’t have to deal with you, the momentary gratification of seeing a bodega cat look up at you will not help. If anything, she might be the cause of further health complications.

There’s a slight chance she might let you pet her for a few seconds before hissing and scratching at you, but I don’t really see how that helps.

And I think you already know the overweight orange cat by the buffet station that fully just fell into the lasagna chafing dish can’t do anything helpful either. Look at him: He can’t even get out of the lasagna. He might be trapped in there forever now.

At night is when we do actual work. If fixing your life involves catching mice, I got you. If your landlord is willing to barter for dead rodents, come find me. If your horrible boss at work is literally a rat, then I’ll take care of it. Otherwise, there’s not much we bodega cats can do to help your situation.

And please don’t steal any of us, it would be both unhelpful AND expensive for you. Don’t try to help the overweight orange cat either; he has since given up trying to eat his way out of the lasagna and has resigned himself to being permanently trapped under melted cheese in a warming tin.

So, no, while my friends and I may provide a few seconds of relief, if you’re searching for meaning and direction in your life, I’m sorry, I’m just a cute kitty stretching at your local bodega, and my friends and I can’t fix your problems.

Wait, actually, that Sphynx cat up on the top shelf, watching over us like an Egyptian pharaoh, wields the Amulet of Horus and thus has the power of the gods to fix all your problems. She just chooses not to.

Engorged by Criticism

Ali Fitzgerald — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:01:00 -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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A Queer Writer’s Survival Guide to the Literary Agent Hypocrisy Circus: PRETEND vs. ACTUAL

Justin Taroli — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

PRETEND: “We want diverse stories that push boundaries!”
ACTUAL: “Just make sure your ‘diversity’ doesn’t make our straight white readers uncomfortable. Gay but not too gay. Brown, but relatable. If your trauma can’t be solved by brunch, it’s a pass.”

PRETEND: “Literature should make you uncomfortable.”
ACTUAL: “But not in a way that makes me, a straight white agent, reflect on my privilege. I meant uncomfortable like, ‘Oh no, she wore mismatched socks to the book club!’”

PRETEND: “We’re hungry for authentic queer voices!”
ACTUAL: “But can you make it, you know, more like a straight person’s coming-of-age? We want RuPaul energy, but in a Love, Simon package—nothing that’ll make Becky from Vermont question her marriage.”

PRETEND: “Please, no more trauma porn.”
ACTUAL: “Unless it’s white suburban trauma—then we’ll call it ‘generational saga’ and give it a pastel cover.”

PRETEND: “Be bold, be daring, break the rules.”
ACTUAL: “But please adhere to this eight-point font, one-inch margin, three-hundred-word synopsis, and don’t you dare confuse me with experimental structure.”

PRETEND: “We want queer joy! Write freely!”
ACTUAL: “But make sure there’s a straight best friend to guide the reader through the scary parts. If anyone has sex, fade to black, please.”

PRETEND: “Send polished, spell-checked work only.”
ACTUAL: “The last three books I sold read like Tumblr drafts. If you’re white, straight, and went to Iowa, I’ll proofread it myself.”

PRETEND: “Follow all the tips I give on social media.”
ACTUAL: “The real tip is: Know someone at my brunch group. Otherwise, your query is just content for my next post about ‘how not to open a letter.’”

PRETEND: “Give me something I haven’t seen before!”
ACTUAL: “But it needs to fit on the shelf next to three identical books already optioned for television. Risky but safe, edgy but soothing, queer but market-tested.”

PRETEND: “I have time for every query.”
ACTUAL: “I skim for comps, then forward your trauma to an intern so I can answer DMs about my cat.”

PRETEND: “We celebrate bold, unapologetic queer stories!”
ACTUAL: “As long as the gays are funny sidekicks or tragic martyrs. Don’t make the straight readers squirm. Happy endings optional. Sanitized for cis consumption.”

PRETEND: “We’re craving narratives about race, identity, and intersectionality.”
ACTUAL: “But can you whitewash it for the book-club crowd? If your Black protagonist scares a Target shopper, cut it. Bonus points if you mention Paris or Italy.”

PRETEND: “We’re here to shake up the industry!”
ACTUAL: “But only after my Pilates class with other straight white agents. Disruption is fine as long as my latte and legacy are safe.”

PRETEND: “We want something that’s never been done.”
ACTUAL: “Can you write Normal People again, but with a bisexual love interest who never says ‘bisexual’?”

PRETEND: “We believe in platforming marginalized writers.”
ACTUAL: “But if you don’t already have a blue check, 10K followers, and a headshot that fits the aesthetic, keep screaming into the void.”

PRETEND: “I want a book that keeps me up all night.”
ACTUAL: “Unless it’s about your gay sex life, in which case, I’ll pretend to lose your email.”

PRETEND: “Trust the process—agents know best!”
ACTUAL: “You’re here for tips, but I optioned a TikTok poet and a nepotism case this year, so do as I say, not as I green-light.”

PRETEND: “We want to challenge the canon.”
ACTUAL: “But only if Daddy Roth and Aunt Didion are still on the invite list. Canon, but make it cottagecore.”

PRETEND: “I want books that feel urgent.”
ACTUAL: “Urgent as in: White lady has an affair and buys a new plant, then writes a think piece about it. Anything else is ‘a tough sell.’”

PRETEND: “We value stories that challenge power structures.”
ACTUAL: “But not this power structure. Don’t challenge me. If it makes me feel like maybe I’m part of the problem, I’ll just not respond.”

“NEWS MAN BAD”: A Personnel Memo from Animal, Your Editor-In-Chief

Jack Loftus — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:30:00 -0700

“‘The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable,’ Scott Pelley said late Tuesday, just hours after being fired from CBS News after almost 40 years at the network. ‘The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.’”
— Variety

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Previously, in the Animal Newsroom.

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TO: NEWSROOM
FROM: ANIMAL, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
SUBJECT: NEWS MAN TOO ANIMAL

NEWS TEAM,

ANIMAL WRITE MEMO WITH HEAVY HEART AND LIGHT HR OVERSIGHT.

MONDAY MEETING WITH NEWS MAN GO BAD. NEWS MAN SPEAK LOUD. NEWS MAN SAY THINGS. NEWS MAN DEFEND JOURNALISM LIKE JOURNALISM CAN BE SAVED FROM ANIMAL’S LARRY ELLISON MONEY.

THIS MAKE ANIMAL THINK: WHOA. NEWS MAN TOO MUCH ANIMAL EVEN FOR ANIMAL.

THIS HARD FOR ANIMAL TO SAY. ANIMAL RESPECT PASSION. ANIMAL LOVE YELLING. ANIMAL ONCE ATE THREE MICROPHONES AFTER CECOT SEGMENT. BUT THERE ARE LINES. NEWS ROOM HAS STANDARDS. THOSE STANDARDS NOW VERY FLEXIBLE, BUT STILL TECHNICALLY LINES.

NEWS MAN CREATE HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT BY SAYING JOURNALISM SHOULD BE GOOD. MANAGEMENT FEEL UNSAFE AROUND FACTS.

THEN NEWS MAN REFUSE APOLOGY LETTER. ANIMAL UNDERSTAND. ANIMAL ALSO REFUSE MANY LETTERS. CEASE AND DESIST. FINAL WARNING. NOTE FROM PBS SAYING PLEASE RETURN BIG BIRD’S CYMBALS.

NEWS MAN MADE PEOPLE REMEMBER NEWS WAS NOT ALWAYS CONTENT DISPENSER BETWEEN DRUG COMMERCIALS AND ADS FOR GOLD PRESIDENT PHONE. SO NEWS MAN MUST GO.

REMEMBER: MANAGEMENT STILL LOVE COURAGE. COURAGE JUST NEED PREAPPROVAL.

AAAAAGGGHHH,

ANIMAL
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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TO: NEWSROOM
FROM: ANIMAL, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
SUBJECT: NEW BEAR SAME FUTURE

NEWS TEAM,

QUICK ANIMAL FOLLOW-UP: NEW EXECUTIVE PRODUCER IS FOZZIE BEAR. FOZZIE ASKS TOUGH QUESTIONS LIKE, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” AND THEN, WHEN SUBJECT REFUSED TO ANSWER, FOZZIE SAY, “Wocka wocka,” WHICH IS INDUSTRY TERM FOR ACCOUNTABILITY.

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TO: NEWSROOM
FROM: FOZZIE BEAR, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
SUBJECT: WOCKA WOCKA

Dear pals,

First of all, wow, what a room. Tough crowd! And I should know, because I have performed for two old men on a balcony who once heckled me for not wearing pants.

I just want to say I love this institution. I love the news. Some of you may be wondering why I accepted this job knowing I have no discernible reporting skills and don’t wear pants, or anything down there, really. Well, that is very hurtful, but fair. Ha! Get it? Fair? Like balanced journalism? Wocka wocka!

Please don’t throw anything heavy.

Warmly,
Fozzie

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TO: NEWSROOM
FROM: ANIMAL, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
SUBJECT: BIG BEAR ENERGY

NEWS TEAM,

ANIMAL VERY EXCITED FOR FOZZIE. FOZZIE BRING FRESH ENERGY, BIG HAT, NONTHREATENING FACE. FOZZIE NOT INTIMIDATED BY POWER. POWER SIGNING OUR PAYCHECKS NOW THOUGH, SO NO SURPRISE. FOZZIE MOSTLY INTIMIDATED BY ELEVATORS, SILENT ROOMS, AND ANYONE WHO MENTION LACK OF PANTS.

SOME STAFF WORRY FOZZIE NOT RIGHT FIT. SOME SAY SHOW NEED PRODUCER WITH DEEP INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE, NOT BEAR WHO CARRY BRIEFCASE FULL OF BANANA PEELS. ANIMAL HEAR CONCERNS. ANIMAL PLACE CONCERNS IN BOX MARKED “REMARKABLE INCIVILITY AND CONTEMPT” NEXT TO NEWS MAN.

LET ANIMAL BE CLEAR: PUBLIC DISAGREEMENT BAD. PRIVATE CONVERSATION ALSO BAD. IF NEWS SHOW BEING MURDERED LIKE NEWS MAN SAY, PLEASE RAISE HAND, WAIT TO BE CALLED ON, AND USE WORDS LIKE “realignment” AND “legacy evolution” OR JOIN NEWS MAN IN BOX.

- - -

TO: NEWSROOM
FROM: FOZZIE BEAR, EXECUTIVE EDITOR
SUBJECT: SOME GREAT NEWSROOM IDEAS

Hi again,

I’ve been thinking… what if every investigative interview starts with a joke to loosen up the whistleblower? For example: “Why did the classified document cross the road? Because it was improperly retained!” Haaa!

No? Nothing? Boy, you folks really do not blink much.

Also, I am told some recent personnel decisions predated me. That is good, because I was worried I had done them in my sleep. I do sleepwalk sometimes, once straight into a pie.

Fozzie

- - -

TO: NEWSROOM
FROM: ANIMAL, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
SUBJECT: SLAY THE NEWS

NEWS TEAM,

THIS IS MOMENT OF RENEWAL. OLD NEWS ASK HARD QUESTIONS OF POWER. NEW NEWS ASK HARD QUESTIONS OF STAFF, LIKE WHY STAFF SO ATTACHED TO OLD WAY WHERE JOURNALISTS DO JOURNALISM.

FOZZIE WILL LEAD US INTO FUTURE. FUTURE HAS COLLABORATION. FUTURE HAS SOARING STOCK PRICE. FUTURE HAS BEAR TRYING VERY HARD WHILE CORPORATE GIANTS MOVE FLOOR BENEATH HIM.

REMEMBER: WE NOT KILL NEWS. WE REFRESH FORMAT UNTIL PULSE HARD TO DETECT.

AAAAAGGGHHH,

ANIMAL
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

“Descartes Against Humanity” and Other Games Designed by Famous Philosophers

Ryan Weber — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:00:00 -0400

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The original 1975 introduction by
Documentary Now!’s first host,
Burt Lancaster