McSweeney’s

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

Andrew Singleton — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 14:00:00 -0400

“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 10:12:00 -0700

“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.

We Have Achieved Our Goal of Making Everything Worse Than It Was Before

Joe Viner — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 04:29:00 -0700

“Vice President JD Vance’s failure to win the concessions the United States sought from Iran in a single, marathon negotiating session over its nuclear program was no surprise… The failure leaves the Trump administration facing several unpalatable options.” — New York Times

- - -

When we willingly chose to start this war against our will, we had one sole objective: to make everything slightly worse than it was before. And now, through a combination of military might and hard-nosed diplomacy, we have achieved our aim.

Go ahead, step outside. Breathe. Admittedly, you won’t notice much of a difference because the world today is pretty much the same as it was a few weeks ago, only more unstable. Which, again—and we cannot stress this enough—was the whole point.

Sure, it was touch-and-go for a while there. Entirely predictable things happened that we could never have foreseen, jeopardizing our chances of success in this completely unnecessary war of necessity. The world teetered on the brink of chaos: financial collapse, geopolitical meltdown, the potential death of millions. But at the last minute, when all hope seemed lost, we managed to avert disaster and walk away with precisely what we set out to accomplish: a net loss.

Now, some people might argue that negotiating yourself out of a situation of your own making only to walk away with less than nothing is no cause for celebration. Au contraire. It actually takes a lot of courage to do something that nobody asked for at great personal expense, and that sort of selflessness should be applauded, not mocked or questioned or denounced by the UN.

Others will say that this was a war of choice. Wrong. This was “do or die.” Or as we like to think of it, “do or do nothing and leave everything basically fine.” Sure, we could have just sat back and twiddled our thumbs. And sure, had we done that, everything would be largely the same as it was two months ago, i.e., better than it is today. But instead, we chose to act. We chose to do something. And isn’t it better to make things a little worse than to do nothing at all?

Not since Winston Churchill stood on that balcony and held up that famous “V for Victory” has a military success been so complete and total. Sure, winning WWII may have resulted in the defeat of fascism in Europe, but this war has achieved something even more extraordinary, something that many thought impossible: it’s made Marjorie Taylor Greene seem almost reasonable.

Look, what’s the point in even having elected leaders if they’re not going to start costly wars that nobody voted for? How else were we going to spend those billions of dollars we had lying around? Invest in public schools and healthcare? Launch ambitious civil infrastructure projects? That’s ridiculous. Anyone with half a brain can see that the astronomical cost of this conflict was worth it to guarantee our children a future that is less bright and safe than it was before.

The Story of Art + Water

Dave Eggers — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 07:16:00 -0400

For fifteen years or so, I’d been kicking around the idea of resurrecting the artist-apprentice model that reigned in the art world for hundreds of years.

Again and again, I’d heard from young people who lamented the astronomical and ever-rising cost of art school. For many college-level art programs, the total cost to undergraduates is now over $100,000 a year. I hope we can all agree that charging students $400,000 for a four-year degree in visual art is objectively absurd. And this prohibitive cost has priced tens of thousands of potential students out of even considering undertaking such an education.

For years, I mentioned this issue to friends in and out of the art world, and everyone, without exception, agreed that the system was broken. Even friends I know who teach at art schools agreed that the cost was out of control, and these spiraling costs were contributing to the implosion of many undergraduate and postgraduate art programs.

Then I brought it up with JD Beltran, a longtime friend prominent in the San Francisco art scene, who herself was suffering under the weight of $150,000 in art-school debt, which she’d incurred in the late 1990s. She’d been carrying that debt for thirty years—for a degree in painting she got in 1998 from the San Francisco Art Institute—and together we started mapping out an alternative.

It’s important to note that the current model for art schools is very new. For about a thousand years, until the twentieth century, artists typically either apprenticed for a master artist, learning their trade by working in a studio, or attended loose ateliers where a group of artist-students studied under an established artist, and paid very little to do so. These students would help maintain the studio, they would hire models, they would practice their craft together, and the studio’s owner would instruct these students while still creating his own work—usually in the same building.

Somehow, though, we went from a model where students paid little to nothing, and learned techniques passed down through the centuries, to a system where students pay $100,000, and often learn very little beyond theory. A recent graduate of one of our country’s most respected MFA programs—not in the Bay Area—told me that in her third year as an MFA student, she paid over $100,000 in tuition and fees, and in exchange, she met with her advisor once every two weeks. That third year, there were no classes, no skills taught—there was only a twice-monthly meeting with this advisor. Each meeting lasted one hour. Over the course of that third year, she met with this advisor twenty times, meaning that each of these one-hour sessions cost the MFA student $5,000. And during these sessions, again, no hard skills were taught. It was only theory, only discussion. At the rate of $5,000 an hour (and of course her instructor was not the recipient of this $5,000/hr!) This seems to be an inequitable system in need of adjustment.

So JD Beltran and I started thinking of an alternative. For years, it was little more than idle chatter until one day in 2022, I was biking around the Embarcadero, and happened to do a loop around Pier 29, and because one of its roll-top doors was open, I saw that it was enormous, and that it was empty.

JD and I started making inquiries with the Port of San Francisco, a government agency that oversees the waterfront. They’re the agency that helped the Giants ballpark get built, who helped reopen the Ferry Building, and made it possible for the Exploratorium to relocate from the Palace of Fine Arts to their current location on the waterfront. In the forty years since the collapse of the wretched highway that used to cover the Embarcadero, the Port of SF has done great things to make that promenade a jewel of the city.

JD and I started meeting with the Port back in 2023. In particular, Amy Cohen and Scott Landsittel encouraged us to write up a proposal, and early on they matched us up with the Community Arts Stabilization Trust, an SF nonprofit dedicated to helping arts organizations stay in the city. David Keenan and Ken Ikeda at CAST became our partners in navigating the complex zoning and permitting requirements for those tenants inhabiting the piers.

The core of our proposal was this:

Ten established artists would get free studio space in the pier. At a time when all visual artists are struggling to find and keep studio space in this expensive city, this free studio space would help some of our best local artists stay local.
In exchange for this free studio space, these ten established artists would agree to teach a cohort of twenty emerging artists, who also would be given free studio space in the pier.

That was the core of the idea. Simple, we hoped. And it would bring thirty visual artists all to Pier 29, to learn from each other, and the emerging artists would get a world-class, graduate-level education. And because thirty artists would be occupying the pier, the staffing required to maintain the program would be minimal. The thirty resident artists would become caretakers of the space.

Thus began fourteen months of meetings, proposals, and permitting discussions. The Port’s staff were encouraging, because that part of the Embarcadero is a very quiet zone, with few restaurants or cafés—and those who were there, struggle. (The famed Fog City Diner of Mrs. Doubtfire, recently went under.)

OUR NEW MODEL, WHICH IS A VARIATION ON THE OLD MODEL

For the educational component of the Art + Water program, I did some napkin math and discovered something so simple that I assumed it couldn’t work: If each of these ten established artists taught just three hours a week, together they would provide these twenty emerging artists with thirty hours of instruction per week. These three hours wouldn’t put too great a burden on any one of the established artists, but the accumulated knowledge imparted each week by these ten established—and varied, and successful—artists would be immeasurable. And they would be able to do it for free.

And because the thirty artists, established and emerging, would be sharing one pier, they’d be able to consult with each other regularly, even outside of class hours, and more mentorship and camaraderie would occur organically. (One of the strangest things about many advanced art-school programs is how distant the teachers’ and students’ studios are from each other. For hundreds of years, apprentices were able to see, and even participate in, the making of the established artists’ work. Now, that’s largely lost. Professors work across town, or in distant cities; the two practices are miles apart, and so much knowledge is never transferred. When BFA and MFA students are around only other students, they can’t see how successful working artists make their art, or indeed how they make a living.)

With Art + Water, the hope was that if these emerging artists had their studios right next to successful artists, they could see how the work was created, they could ask questions, and they could even assist (just as apprentices used to assist the master artists). Infinitely more knowledge would be transferred through this proximity than could ever be in a classroom-only program.

So when I did my 3 × 10 = 30 napkin math, JD Beltran, who had not only gotten an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute but had also taught at SFAI, the California College of Art, SF State, and Stanford, shocked me by agreeing that my napkin math made sense to her, too. So we kept pressing on.

Next, we had to think of who might head up this group of established artists. We needed a Head of Resident Artists, and immediately, JD thought of Ana Teresa Fernandez, whom she had taught at SFAI back in the day. We both admired Ana Teresa’s work, her bold vision, her strong moral compass, and her ability to excel in a variety of media, from oil to sculpture to site-specific outdoor art on a grand scale. So we called Ana Teresa, and were in the middle of explaining the program when she interrupted us to accept. Because she, too, had struggled to find US programs that taught the skills and techniques she wanted to learn, she found herself seeking out classes in Florence, where she studied in an atelier not unlike the one we were planning. Anyway, Ana Teresa was in.

Over this past summer, Ana Teresa and JD put together an extraordinary group of SF artists who agreed to be the first group of artist-educators at Art + Water. They are Jet Martinez, Taraneh Hemani, George McCalman, Jenifer Wofford, David Wilson, Travis Somerville, and Paul Madonna. Ana Teresa, and JD will have their studios at Pier 29, too, and will teach alongside this first cohort.

This group of resident artists represents a phenomenal range of practices, but they all share one thing: a dedication to the Bay Area and a strong desire to create a new and more equitable model of art education. They will each move their studios into Pier 29 this fall, and they are currently putting together a rigorous one-year curriculum for the twenty emerging artists who will learn from them.

About those emerging artists: Soon on the Art + Water website and social media platforms, you’ll see directions for how to apply. Ana Teresa, JD, and the other resident artists will be looking for twenty San Francisco aspirants of any age (truly any age, please apply if you’re 78 and never had the chance to go to art school). These aspirants will receive what will be one of the most thorough art educations anywhere in the United States. The program will take place over one year and will cover every hard skill an artist working in two-dimensional art could want to learn. In an era when it’s exceedingly hard to learn what the Old Masters knew, Art + Water will impart those skills. These emerging artists must know how to draw, and from there, they’ll be taught everything Rembrandt was taught. After learning these hard skills, these artists can and will create work in any media, in any style. But we feel it’s important that they know the hard skills taught for centuries.

To be sure, the established artists working at Art + Water are not classicists. Jet Martinez is not a stodgy classicist. Jenifer Wofford is not a traditionalist. And yet everyone teaching at Pier 29 knows that these hard skills are crucial in helping an emerging artist develop their unique practices, and in preparing them to make an actual living in the visual arts.

Speaking of that:

ART + WATER’S GALLERY SPACE AND STORE

Pier 29 will feature ample gallery space that the established and emerging artists will be able to use whenever they choose. If one of the resident artists wants to have a show of recent work, they only have to reserve the space they need. If a group of artists wants to have a show together, same thing. Save the space, hang your work, put on a show.

In these galleries, the thirty artists will be able to sell their work—everything from works on canvas to postcard reproductions, from original prints to books and T-shirts. And because these galleries will be promoted from the Embarcadero, we expect hundreds to thousands of visitors a week to drop by to see what some of the best artists in San Francisco are making.

RENTABLE AND BORROWABLE SPACE FOR OTHER ORGANIZATIONS AND GALLERIES

There will also be gallery space available for local nonprofits, arts organizations, and local galleries. If you had a gallery that was priced out of your brick-and-mortar space, come to Art + Water and reserve gallery space with us. If you’re Creativity Explored, we want you to put on shows at Pier 29. If you’re the Minnesota Street Projects or ICA or Yerba Buena or the Asian Art Museum, we want to be your go-to satellite space. Anyone who wants to learn more about this available space, please email rebecca@artpluswater.org.

We want these galleries to be as lively and varied as we see at the Fog Art Fair and similar events at Fort Mason Center. Fort Mason, of course, is a great inspiration to us at Art + Water. How they do what they do is an astonishing mystery to us, but we look at their model of maintaining an endlessly convertible space as our north star. We have already been bugging them for advice, and we will continue to do so.

The piers in San Francisco are magical places, and Fort Mason has shown how they can be radically welcoming and constantly surprising community spaces, too. We want everyone to feel welcome to Pier 29, to wander the galleries, to visit our artists, to hear talks, and take free classes. Which brings us to:

FREE TALKS AND CLASSES BY VISITING ARTISTS AND CURATORS

With the help of JD, René de Guzman—his role will be laid out in a second—Ana Teresa, Rebecca, and our resident artists, we’ve assembled what we think is a truly stunning list of visiting artists, all of whom believe in our model and have agreed to visit Art + Water in our first year.

These visiting artists might come for an hour to share their expertise with our emerging artists. They might teach, then give a public talk. They might hold a large-scale public demonstration open to all. Or all of the above. Please keep up with the Art + Water website and other platforms to keep apprised of the schedule for these events.

There will be something happening almost daily.

On the south side of the building, we will have a wide open space where anyone—kids, K-12 groups, even families—who have just disembarked from the cruise ship dock next door—can come in and take free classes or simply sit and draw. There will be free demonstrations, group projects, and a wide array of events that will draw in classes from Bay Area schools. Our hope is that kids on a field trip to the Exploratorium would spend the morning there, eat at the Ferry Building, and then spend the afternoon with Art + Water. Families, too—we want to be another reason for people to visit the city and support local businesses.

Which brings us to how we’ll pay for it all.

OUR EXHIBITION HALL CURATED BY RENE DE GUZMAN

Art + Water’s most public-facing element will be a large exhibition hall where René de Guzman, one of the most experienced curators in the country, will curate ticketed shows that will help cover our costs and bring more people to the pier. René headed up the visual arts programs at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, then ran the Oakland Museum of California for ten years. Now he’ll be bringing the same bold and accessible shows to Pier 29.

The first show will be dedicated to the work of iconic musician and filmmaker Boots Riley. Though Riley’s films are groundbreaking works of surrealism, he’s also a fan of practical effects, using old-school methods to achieve the kinds of shots now commonly created digitally. He uses miniatures, maquettes, forced perspective, and beautiful sets. The exhibit will bring together Riley’s costumes and sets from Sorry to Bother You, props from I’m a Virgo, and even a twenty-foot-tall absurdist set piece from the upcoming I Love Boosters. That film comes out in May of 2026. Boots is just as dedicated as we are to giving visitors a peek behind the curtain of filmmaking, so there will be a slew of classes, demonstrations, and public events in conjunction with this show. I promise you it will be unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

And because we know how expensive it is for educators to arrange field trips, we’ll be offering mini-grants to teachers who need help bringing their students to the show. If you’d like information about that program, please email Rebecca Teague at rebecca@artpluswater.org.

The tickets to these exhibits will be affordable to all. We will never forget that a family of four shouldn’t have to pay $100 to see an art show (or any show). At Art + Water, there will be steep discounts for students, seniors, and families. The pricing will be rational and fair.

Subsequent shows will be devoted to the work of Maurice Sendak (and his love of Mozart and the stage), Maira Kalman (imagine her populating 20,000 square feet with her inimitable versions of the creatures of the world), and the Riot Grrrls (including a concert series, reproductions of thousands of zines, and the materials to make thousands more). I could go on about each of these shows, but I’m seeing that I’m already at 3,500 words, and who reads 3,500 words on a website?

LAST FEW THINGS

Our design and buildout will be overseen by WRNS Studios, one of the great architectural firms in SF. They’re located not far away, just off South Park, and they handled, pro bono, the stunning designs for 826 Valencia’s second and third campuses—in the Tenderloin and Mission Bay. Together, our plan is to make Pier 29 a bold, maximalist place full of color, both welcoming and startling to the eye.
Helping make it weird will be the unprecedented Kristin Farr, who has already created a gigantic still life—a bowl of fruit bigger than a truck—that will be the centerpiece of our living room/event space. Know this: Scale will be addressed and attacked at Pier 29.
Flora Grubb has agreed to help fill our big empty pier with plants, vines, and, most of all, trees. Because the pier is filled with light but currently devoid of warmth, we want to create an indoor forest that will give the space the urgent breath of the natural world. Artists deserve organic spaces—and wouldn’t it be nice to depart, for a moment, from white walls and right angles?
Art + Water will be a comfortable, 19th-century-style lounge experience where visitors can luxuriate in a space filled with rugs, pillows, tapestries, silver, copper, and gold. Not a Spartan place where you get your email; this will be something slower and provisional, something more elegant and free of screens and stress. It will be a place, for instance, to enjoy Art + Water’s temporary pop-up coffee experiences by Mokhtar Alkhanshali, the hero of The Monk of Mokha and the man who reasserted the prime role of Yemen in the history of coffee.
Art + Water is a small nonprofit and needs donations. If you’d like to help this project, please write to Rebecca Teague, our extraordinary Co-Director, at rebecca@artpluswater.org. Rebecca used to be a punk rock drummer, by the way, so ask her about that, too. She’s also the one who came up with the idea for the Riot Grrrl show and will be helping to mount that exhibit.
JD Beltran is the co-founder Art + Water, and is the main reason that this bonkers idea is coming to fruition. She is the hardest-working person in San Francisco’s art world, and not a bit of this would have been possible without her.
We also owe a profound debt to the Port of San Francisco, the Port Commission and its hardworking (volunteer!) commissioners, and to Amy Cohen and Scott Landsittel, who guided us through the process for the past 14 months. They are the kinds of civil servants we dream about when we think of public service.
Speaking of which: thanks go to Mayor Lurie. A few weeks after Daniel Lurie was elected, we showed him our vision for Pier 29, and his enthusiasm and support was an essential boon at a key moment.

We at Art + Water think this is a great moment in the history of art in SF art. In SFMOMA’s Ruth Asawa show and in the Legion of Honor’s Wayne Theibaud show, we’ve just enjoyed two of the best exhibitions ever mounted for Bay Area artists. There’s the Further triennial coming. There’s the Space Program and the Box Shop and the coming resurrection of the SFAI’s campus in the form of CASA. There’s the Fog Art Fair and Jessica Silverman and Electric Works, and the many valiant galleries that have held on during these trying times. There’s the de Young, which has struck a gorgeous balance between accessibility—with their brilliant and joyous Open shows—and the very highest achievements in curation and presentation; their Kehinde Wiley show was an unimprovable staging full of drama and nuance. No institution could have done better, anywhere.

We hope that Art + Water can be part of what could be an unending ascension of this city’s visual arts....

Here at H&R Block, It’s Our Pleasure to Answer Your Questions About How We Funnel Your Tax Dollars Into the Gullet of the Great War Pig

Amanda Lehr — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:00:00 -0400

How do I find my local H&R Block?
Enter your zip code on our website to find an H&R Block near you. Alternatively, just drive by any property that used to contain a Spirit Halloween.

Can I file my taxes online?
You can, but it hurts our feelings when you use our services without coming in to talk to us.

Fine. I’ll come in person. But what happens after my taxes are filed?
You will possibly receive a refund via direct deposit once your tax dollars are deposited into the steaming gullet of the Great War Pig.

I’m sorry, what?
The Great War Pig.

Is that his name or his job?
His name is unspeakable, though you know it in the rotten depths of your heart.

What does the Great War Pig do?
Whatever He wants. The Pig does not answer to man’s law, unless we remember that, in fact, he does. With hooves of iron, He treads upon the earth, breathing pestilence and supping upon the blood of the innocent. Mammon feeds Him tender apples, and Moloch rides astride His leathery back. Wrath and ruin lick the ground in His wake, where He leaves a trail of oil and the tears of keening mothers.

That sounds bad.
It is bad. While H&R Block does not endorse the activities of the Great War Pig, we must feed Him.

So, He just eats my money?
Technically, the delivery system is a loose groats-and-egg slurry, so He both eats and drinks your money.

Is that why eggs are so expensive right now?
Stop talking about eggs. We don’t want to hear any more about eggs.

What if we didn’t feed The Pig?
We must.

Can The Pig eat something else?
Once, we tried to feed Him a piece of cake from the break room. Marjorie lost her hand. She’s still trying to get workers’ comp.

Can anyone stop The Pig?
Yes.

Then why don’t they?
We must keep the Great War Pig fat and happy, though He can be stopped at any time. It is not for us at H&R Block to decide.

How do you sleep at night?
We don’t.

Can the Great War Pig be reasoned with?
The Great War Pig is beyond the boundaries of reason. The Pig snorts. A fly has landed upon His open eye, lolling and white as milk. He feels nothing.

So, my money goes to feed him no matter what?
It doesn’t have to, but it definitely will.

Is it me, or is it especially warm in here?
That is the breath of The Pig, hot and urgent on the back of your neck.

How will I sleep at night?
You won’t.

Excerpts from The Believer: An Interview with Thomas McGuane

Mattie C. Govan — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 09:01:00 -0400

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Fishing apparel mentioned:

A tarpon-wear shirt
Old bib-front overalls
Bow ties and club blazers
Jean shorts

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It will come as no surprise to longtime readers of Thomas McGuane’s work that while I was speaking with him, I was moved by his kindness, his incisive insight, and, above all, his mischievous sense of fun. The craic was exceptional. We are both writers, anglers, and equestrians, and we’d both recently fished for Atlantic salmon in arctic Norway. We laughed a lot during our conversation: in helplessness, in disbelief, in despair, and at the inherent comedy of life.

Thomas McGuane was born in 1939 in Michigan. He studied at Michigan State University, pursued his graduate studies in English and drama at Yale University, and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He has written eleven novels and four short-story collections, including The Sporting Club , Ninety-Two in the Shade , and Cloudbursts . His nonfiction includes The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing (1999; reissued with additional essays in 2019), Some Horses , and An Outside Chance: Essays on Sport . McGuane is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Cutting Horse Association Hall of Fame, and the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame. His latest short-story collection is A Wooded Shore .

I turned to McGuane’s work in earnest in 2022 to study the way he writes about fly-fishing. McGuane distills a lifetime’s study of nature and language in his writing, as in this passage in The Longest Silence:

A fish came with a slow rolling motion and started back to his lie with my Green Highlander in the corner of his mouth. I let him tighten against the reel and raised my rod. And now we were off to the races, me running over the round rocks in wading shoes while the fish cartwheeled in midriver, the thread of Dacron backing streaming after it and the reel making its sublime music… I released him without ever taking him out of the water and he flickered away into the depths of his ancestral river.

In preparation for our conversation, I spent a happy month reading his oeuvre, and I enjoyed seeing similar themes and getting autobiographical glimpses. I read his books in such a short span of time that sometimes I felt like a character in a McGuane novel: prone to serious errors in judgment but essentially sweet, and able to converse with horses.

I met McGuane at his home on the west coast of Florida, on a peninsula of a historic tarpon fishing area. The living quarters were on the second story of a wooden house, reminiscent of a tropical summer camp. Books lined the shelves and were piled on coffee tables. Fly rods were mounted on one wall. A well-thumbed bird book and binoculars were at the ready in his sunroom. As McGuane and I spoke, Jinx, his English pointer, and Cooper, his adopted Lab-and-border-collie mix, wandered in and out or snoozed contentedly.

McGuane, like his writing, was brimming with knowledge on a variety of subjects, including history, botany, and ornithology. McGuane told me about E. B. White’s son, Joel White, who was a great designer of wooden sailboats: “Joel White published a sketch for a small sloop, but I think working drawings had not been done. I contacted him about a scheme to build the boat, which we did, building a cold-molded version designed by an ice boat builder in Wisconsin. The design proved popular, and more than a hundred of these sloops, the Sakonnet 23, have been built so far and are sailing from Massachusetts to South Africa and Japan.”

Tom’s wife, Laurie, is, among many things, a rancher, an excellent horsewoman, and a pancreatic cancer survivor. Over a heavenly lunch of crab cakes, salads, iced tea, and key lime pie, we chatted about life in small towns, books they’d read recently, and their desire to keep learning.

On my final day in Florida, I fished with an exuberant guide, Sainy Taha, whom McGuane had recommended. We saw ospreys, snowy egrets, a little blue heron, bottlenose dolphins, a manatee and her calf. Taha took me to tailing redfish in backcountry flats, and spoke passionately about the pressures exerted on this population of fish: climate change, red tides, and too many motorboats.

In an exchange after our interview, McGuane mentioned the importance of taking risks in writing: “Freedom to improvise and commitment to revision are the basis of my practice.” To balance discipline with playfulness and risk-taking is sound advice for artists and anglers alike.

—Mattie C. Govan

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I. “COMPETITION HAS ITS LIMITS”

THE BELIEVER: There is drama and comedy inherent in sport: For example, in The Longest Silence, in your essay “Sons,” you describe a fishing trip in Quintana Roo where your son turns up disheveled and underprepared and ends up catching a permit, one of the most challenging fish to catch. What draws you to writing about sport?

THOMAS McGUANE: There’s always an embedded narrative. Either you’re trying to win a game or you’re trying to catch a fish, so the narrative issues are almost automatic. You don’t have to dream that up. A lot of it is my general love of nature, in this particular case, and the need to have some game to play in it.

I’m not a naturalist. I wouldn’t stand in the woods all day with my binoculars. I wish I were, actually. I need to be doing something in nature that’s compatible with being an observer and a listener and all those things. For me, fishing does that. And the older I get, the more it’s about that component of it. In fact, trophy fishing and competitive fishing have come to seem juvenile.

BLVR: The qualities of an athlete serve a writer well: discipline, ambition, resilience. However, being overly competitive or being boastful in victory are not desirable qualities. In your different athletic arenas, competition exists in more or less overt forms.

TM: That’s hard to live up to, especially if you find yourself with a few other anglers and you’re the only one not catching anything. You can look at somebody else’s flexing rod and feel embittered by the sight. I try to rise above that. I don’t think I’m going to succeed, but one of the things I like about fishing by myself is that if I want to stop, to not fish, I can do something else or sit and look at things. When you’re by yourself, you can do that. With other people, you’ve got to have this collective reality and fit into that somehow.

BLVR: In your essay “The Sea-Run Fish,” you mention fishing with a man who was throwing rocks into the river. The worst side of human nature was on display.

TM: That was an aggressive lawyer from Denver, and one of the guests at the camp was French. I think it was the era of the Freedom Fries and all that anti-European sentiment. Whenever the French angler was trying to fish, he’d stand on the bank and throw rocks into the water in front of him. It was awful.

BLVR: How do you think about competition in your different arenas? For example, when you are in a cutting horse competition.1 If you are fishing by yourself, you are competing against yourself, in a way. In some of these outdoor pursuits, competition is taken too far: for example, who catches the most fish.

TM: Riding cutting horses is very competitive. Almost bitterly competitive. And when I was a steer roper, that was clearer because it was not a judged contest; it was a timed contest. Cutting is comparable to dressage. “Cutting is ruled by its judges, and its judges are ruled by the fashions of cutting, or, shall we say, prevailing opinion” [a quote from Some Horses. Roping was simpler and it was less stressful in a way, because either you catch the steer or you don’t, and you catch it within a certain amount of time. Cutting is really cerebral: You have to memorize a herd; you have to memorize what’s been cut in the herd. When the cattle are being settled, you have to look at the cattle that would suit your horse and all these kinds of things. And you’ve got to memorize all that. Then, after carrying all this information in your head, which changes with every competitor, you have to ride well. It’s an exhausting endeavor. Most people who cut are obsessive.

BLVR: Everything could be aligned and one element goes awry. You’ve said you were once in a cutting horse competition, there was noise in the stands, it distracted your horse, and you lost the competition.

TM: I’m still not over that. There was a digital clock hanging over the Astrodome arena, and the next day I had to give a talk at the University of Florida in a pretty big lecture hall, and I would look out at all these faces and all I could see was the digital clock back in Houston.

BLVR: Your literary friendship with Jim Harrison is well documented, and you wrote letters for many years. Friendship is at the center of many of your stories and novels: I am thinking of “Take Half, Leave Half,” from your latest story collection; “Cowboy”; and The Sporting Club. There can be an element of competition in friendships when you are working in the same field. Do you thrive on this competition, or do you find yourself wanting to get away from it?

TM: Competition has its limits. It’s something to be avoided if it’s a real friendship. There’s always a certain amount of needling going on between friends, mostly affectionate.

BLVR: I think it’s different with female friendships and male friendships: In my experience, women can be polite to each other’s faces, but then stab each other in the back, whereas perhaps men are overtly competitive. You’ve written about having a competitive, at times adversarial, relationship with your father. You said anyone having fun annoyed him. He wanted to be a writer. Did it fuel you?

TM: Part of it was that I had high expectations when I was a little boy of what my friendship with my father would be. He introduced me to a lot of things I still love to do. But he was an alcoholic, so a lot of him, as I knew him, floated away, and we didn’t do any of the things we used to do together. As I improved at the activities he had introduced me to, he was embittered. The very rare times we would get to fish together, I probably was pretty hard on his abilities. I don’t really remember feeling particularly competitive with him—more disappointment that he didn’t want to keep doing it. When I was a boy, I read an ad for Hart Schaffner Marx suits, “For the man who would like to look like he’s made $10,000 a year by the age of 30.” I said to my father, “Why don’t you try to make $10,000 a year? When you achieve that, instead of trying to make more, why don’t you try to make it in less time, and we’ll spend that time fishing?” He said, “Anybody with that attitude would never make $10,000 in the first place.” That’s not competition. It’s disappointment.

BLVR: From my understanding, he would take himself out of the competition. Other people would take you fishing and he’d say: I have to work.

TM: That’s exactly it. When I moved to Montana in the late ’60s, he came out, looked around the magnificent area that we live in, and said, “This is the kind of place where people live after others have done all the work.”

BLVR: This makes me think of a Protestant work ethic, that self-flagellating work ethic, but he was Catholic. Maybe it’s an American work ethic?

TM: My mother was very definitely Irish and Catholic. My father was Irish Catholic, putatively. But he had taken on the mantle of New England–ism. I loved his father, my grandfather, a very hardworking Irishman. My father inherited his capacity for unstinting work, but he had lost the ability to have fun. He identified his joyless worldview with virtue.

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Read the rest of the interview over at The Believer.

America’s Op-ed Columnists Brainstorm Future Headlines About the Birth Rate

Ginny Hogan — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0700

“The Birth Rate Is Falling, and It Has Nothing to Do with the Cost of Housing, Health Care, or Childcare. It’s Women”

“The Falling Birth Rate: A Crisis with Many Complex Causes, All of Them Female”

“Women Cite ‘Financial Instability’ for Not Having Children. What Aren’t They Telling Us?”

“Did Feminism Ruin the Birth Rate?”

“Who Is to Blame for the Falling Birth Rate? College-Educated Women”

“Who Is to Blame for the Falling Birth Rate? Non-College-Educated Women”

“Who Is to Blame for the Falling Birth Rate? Women Whose Educational Status We Were Unable to Confirm”

“Experts Agree: The Birth Rate Crisis Is Multifaceted, Structural, and Female”

“Did IUDs Ruin the Birth Rate?”

“We Spent Six Months Investigating the Birth Rate Crisis and Found Women at Every Turn”

“Birth Rates Are Down Across the Western World. One Variable Has Remained Constant: Women”

“Experts Warn the Falling Birth Rate Could Have Serious Consequences for Men”

“I Wasn’t That Stressed About America’s Falling Birth Rate. Until I Realized It Was Women’s Fault”

“Did Planned Parenthood Ruin the Birth Rate?”

“We Asked Eight Women Why They Didn’t Want Children. We Forgot to Write Down Their Answers”

“The Birth Rate Is Falling. Women Are Thriving. Experts Are Concerned About the Birth Rate”

“We Don’t Want to Say It’s All Women’s Fault, But We Have Now Said It Several Times, Because It Is”

“Women Are Having Fewer Babies Than Ever. They Seem Fine With It. Disaster”

“Did Hillary Clinton Ruin the Birth Rate?”

“Why Aren’t American Women Having More Babies? We Asked Fourteen Men”

“The Birth Rate Has Been Falling for Decades. Why Didn’t We Realize Earlier That It Was Women’s Fault?”

“Could Birth Rates Recover If We Stopped Calling It a ‘Choice’?”

“America Needs More Babies. Women Need to Stop Making This About Themselves”

“Did No-Fault Divorce Laws Ruin the Birth Rate?”

“Take One for the Team: Birth Rate Edition”

“Women Say They Can’t Afford Children. But Have They Considered Not Thinking About it Until After the Baby Arrives?”

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“Women Are Having Fewer Babies. Is Brunch to Blame?”

“The Birth Rate Is Falling. The Economy Is Struggling. Democracy Is Fragile. Women Are Eating Avocado Toast”

“We Interviewed Two Hundred Childless Women, and Every Single One Was Doing Something Fun”

“Did Women Ruin the Birth Rate?”

Cover Letter for a Job I Don’t Want

Elizabeth Rose — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 10:00:00 -0700

Dear Hiring Manager,

I am setting aside my aspirations and sense of self-worth to apply for the Global Account Project Management Executive position at Capital Ventures. Despite my disdain for and ethical opposition to generative AI, I’ve asked ChatGPT to write this cover letter to fulfill the requirement outlined in your posting. Unfortunately, it spat out nonsense slop, which I have had to edit heavily. I understand this will be “read” by other AI and not evaluated by a human; accordingly, I am including as many buzzwords as possible so that this letter aligns with the company’s mission to expand global accounts, innovate, and drive stakeholder value.

In my previous roles, I have practiced advanced synergetic evaluations of international high-stakes markets and engaged in vague problem-solving. As a nameless cog in a corporate machine, I have worked hours far in excess of those outlined in my hiring contract without overtime pay because I needed health insurance and was afraid of getting fired. I will bring the same fear-based performance to this position.

I also have a strong track record of never taking sick leave. I am not a little whiny bitch who falls ill. No, I am a reliable cog, and I consistently show up to ask AI to type my emails for me while I make tea from the dirty coffee water in the office kitchen, even when I am feverish because we don’t have enough staff to cover for me, and I am trying to save my two sick days for doctor’s appointments. As Global Account Project Management Executive, I will maintain the same in-office attendance record, despite all of my meetings occurring over Teams, because I understand the urgency of this work, even though you couldn’t define it in any concrete terms in the job description.

I am eager to bring my expertise and lack of self-worth to this criminally underpaid position for which I am overqualified. Nothing could be more important to me while the world burns and the country incites war than to give my time and energy in this one precious life to increase your executives’ paychecks. Thank you for your time and consideration.

I look forward to proving my value in eight to ten rounds of interviews for this highly competitive role.

Sincerely,
Elizabeth Rose

McSweeney’s

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Cover Letter for a Job I Don’t Want

April 1965
Meeting to Discuss
Boob Cancer Problem